A Turkish court sentenced a televangelist to 8,658 years in jail for surrounding himself with young ladies he referred to as his “kittens.”
Adnan Oktar, dubbed a cult leader, was found guilty of sexual assault and child abuse.
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Oktar, 66, hosted his own television channel where he preached religious teachings.
He is a staunch opponent of evolution theory and produced a highly ridiculed book on creationism.
He was originally sentenced to 1,075 years in prison, but an appeals court ordered a retrial including 215 defendants.
The court in Istanbul also sentenced ten of them to 8,658 years in jail. Many of the other defendants received lesser sentences.
Oktar and hundreds of his followers were arrested in 2018 from his home on a litany of charges, including running a criminal organisation, tax offences, sexual abuse, and counter-terrorism laws.
During his arrest, Oktar told journalists that the allegations made against him were “lies” and “a game by the British deep state”, a topic he had frequently spoken about in the past.
In January 2021 he was convicted of 10 separate charges, including leading a criminal gang, engaging in political and military espionage, sexual abuse of minors, rape, blackmail and causing torment.
He was also charged over alleged links with exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen, who the Turkish government accuses of masterminding a failed military coup in 2016 which killed 251 people and injured more than 2,000.
That decision was overturned by an appeals court.
Oktar’s ideas have garnered him prominence both in Turkey and overseas, having been imprisoned several times prior to 2018 and spending time in both prison and a psychiatric hospital throughout the years.
Several copies of his widely mocked book “the Atlas of Creation” were purportedly sent to academics and libraries without being requested. He argued in the book that Darwin’s theory of evolution was at the foundation of worldwide terrorism.
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