A televangelist will spend the next 8,658 years in prison after he was convicted and sentenced for sexual assault and abuse of minors.
According to the BBC, the 66-year-old preacher described as a cult leader had his own television channel, through which he delivered religious sermons.
“He is a fierce opponent of the theory of evolution and wrote a widely mocked book on creationism.
“He was originally given a jail sentence of 1,075 years but an appeal court ordered a retrial involving 215 defendants.
“Ten of them were also given 8,658 years in prison by the court in Istanbul. Many of the other defendants were given shorter terms.
“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.
“An upper court overturned that ruling.
“Oktar’s views have earned him a degree of notoriety both in Turkey and abroad, having been arrested multiple times before 2018 and having spent time both in prison and a psychiatric unit over the years.
“Multiple copies of his widely ridiculed book ‘the Atlas of Creation’ were reportedly shipped unrequested to academics and libraries. In the book he claimed Darwin’s theory of evolution lay at the root of global terrorism,” the BBC reports.
In other report, Samuel Boakye, a 55-year-old Ghanaian businessman will spend the next three years of his life in prison for fraudulently taking various amounts of money from unsuspecting people to facilitate their recruitment into the security services.
An Accra Circuit Court has sentenced him after he pleaded guilty to three counts of defrauding by false pretences.
According to myjoyonline.com, the court presided over by Patricia Amponsah convicted Boakye on his own plea and sentenced him accordingly.
Aside from the jail term, the court also ordered Boakye to pay the amount he took from the convicts after serving his sentence.
