Turan News Agency
October 16, 2001

Baku, 16 October: The overwhelming majority of missionary organizations working in Azerbaijan are fronts for foreign intelligence services, Azerbaijani National Security Minister Namiq Abbasov said in an interview with national television on October 9.

He gave an example of a representative of the Greater Grace organization, headed by a Finnish citizen named Silvio Matti. According to Abbasov, he was deported from Azerbaijan in the early 1990s for espionage, but he now visits Azerbaijan again as a representative of the same organization.

The minister criticized the ADRA international organization, which, he said, was propagating the Seventh Day Adventist faith. According to Abbasov, ADRA held a poll running counter to the Azeri mentality among women aged 16 to 40 and did not notify the health ministry about it. The questionnaire had many questions used to gather intelligence, the minister said. He said that such activities would henceforth be firmly stopped.

The minister also said that today there was a real threat of radical groups attacking missionary organizations and advised the latter to stop or restrict their activity in Azerbaijan. As an example, he mentioned extremist organizations like Jeyshullah, which once tried to bomb the Krishna society but was neutralized.

Abbasov said that the following organizations were threatened - the Nehemiah Mission, Jehovah's Witness, Greater Grace, the Evangelical Baptist Church, the New Apostolic Church, the Seventh Day Adventist Church and some Jewish religious organizations.

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