Thanks to BBC News for this:
A court in Turkey has sentenced a televangelist, who surrounded himself with young women he referred to as his “kittens”, to 8,658 years in prison.
Adnan Oktar, who has been described as a cult leader, was convicted of sexual assault and abuse of minors.
Oktar, 66, fronted 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.
Ten of them were also given 8,658 years in prison by the court in Istanbul, Turkey. 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 organization, 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.
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.