Russian court convicted four Jehovah’s Witnesses to seven years in prison eachas they were found guilty of coordinating extremist activities, according to the representative of this religious group.

Russia’s Supreme Court in 2017 labeled Jehovah’s Witnesses an “extremist organization,” disbanding and banning some 400 branches of the religious group across the country.

Since then raids, interrogations and imprisonments of followers of the religious group, which numbered about 175,000 active believers at the time it was outlawed, according to the Russian Jehovah’s Witnesses website, have been systematic in Russia.

“Russia continues to shamelessly abuse its anti-extremism legislation to ban, imprison, and at times abuse and torture Jehovah’s Witnesses,” said the spokesman, the Jarrod Lopezto Reuters via email.

Russian officials have in the past denied accusations of abusing or torturing Jehovah’s Witnesses.

About 790 members of the religious group have been criminally charged or are being investigated for their faith, while 147 were convicted last year, Lopez said.

“Her legal system of Russia it has become a temple that preaches the hatred of extremism,” he said.

Religious life in Russia is determined by the Orthodox Church, which is supported by the president Vladimir Putin. Some Orthodox priests see Jehovah’s Witnesses as a “totalitarian sect”.

Last week, a six-month trial of four Jehovah’s Witnesses in the southwestern Russian city of Samara ended with their sentencing — as found guilty — to seven years in prison each.

The Aram Danielian, Denis Kuzyanin, Sergey Poloshenko and Nikolai Vasiliev were accused based on secret recordings of church services and personal conversations about their faith, as well as electronic ‘evidence’ which, according to Lopez, was placed on a computer belonging to a defendant by an “FSB technician” during a research.

Lopez added that those convicted are expected to appeal the decision.

In another separate case, a woman in the nearby city of Tolyatti was sentenced to two years of hard labor on the same charge on January 24, the same day the four men were sentenced, according to the religious group’s Russian website.