A disgraced Russian monk who had actually barricaded himself inside his monastery with lots of followers wassentenced to an overall of seven years in jail on Friday.Father Sergiy-- whose secular name is Nikolai Romanov-- was currently serving a 3.5-year prison sentence for inciting suicide, offending religions and vigilantism.Moscows Babushkinsky District Court on Friday found him guilty of charges of inciting hatred, according to his lawyers.Video shared by the Ostorozhno Novosti Telegram news channel revealed bailiffs positioning the monk and his spokesman Vsevolod Moguchev inside a glass defendants box.Sporting a grey beard, a black robe and handcuffs, the offender could be seen crossing himself from inside the box.Father Sergiy, a former police officer in the Soviet Union, rose to notoriety at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic after openly denying the presence of the virus and calling on Russians to resist virus restrictions.Prosecutors have actually implicated Father Sergiy of trying to encourage numerous nuns in his convent to devote suicide.The Russian Orthodox Church excommunicated the monk in 2020.
But the priest refused to surrender the convent where he served in the Ural Mountains, leading Russian cops to storm the convent and detain him that year.