Moscow police have been searching the Church of Scientology on Taganskaya Street since Thursday morning, a law enforcement source has told Russian news agency Interfax:
The search could be part of a criminal investigation by the Moscow region’s Investigative Committee into the distribution of scientology literature of the extremist nature, the source said.
Last June a court in a Moscow suburb banned several books by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.
At the time AP reported that the Shchyolkovo court ruled “What is Scientology?” and other books by L. Ron Hubbard “contain calls for extremist activities,” the Prosecutor General’s office said in a statement.
According to Interfax the statement also said, “Experts have made the conclusion that founder of Scientology Ron Hubbard’s books and booklets aim to form an isolated social group, whose members are trained to perform their functions impeccably and most of whom are in a struggle with the rest of the world.”
Tony Ortega at The Village Voice writes
Yes, the video we’re embedding here is in Russian, but the action is understandable enough: Moscow law enforcement raiding the Church of Scientology there, and getting rather medieval on its locked doors.