TBILISI, Georgia - Jehovah's Witnesses complaining of persecution by Orthodox extremists in Georgia said on Thursday they had filed an application to the European Court of Human Rights because of inaction by Georgian prosecutors.
Paul Gillies, a London-based spokesman for the faith, said Jehovah's Witnesses had been attacked on at least 77 occasions by gangs of men often armed with nail-studded clubs.
"We have filed more than 300 complaints to the prosecutor's office but no action has been taken," Gillies told Reuters. "This mob has acted with impunity for 18 months and nobody has tried to stop them."
Jehovah's Witnesses in Georgia have released video footage of gangs of men -- sometimes on horseback and wearing the robes of Orthodox priests -- raiding their meetings, beating worshippers and burning literature on bonfires.
Gillies said the Strasbourg-based European Court had been asked to give the application urgent consideration in view of the ongoing violence.
Human rights groups say the attacks are part of a campaign of violence against religious minorities in overwhelmingly Orthodox Georgia. They say police in the former Soviet republic have turned a blind eye.
"There have been no arrests, absolutely no reaction at all from the police. They know who is doing it, but they don't want to do anything about it," said Kote Vardzelashvili of the Institute of Liberty, an independent human rights group in the Georgian capital Tbilisi.
But a spokeswoman for the Tbilisi prosecutor's office said an intensive investigation began in April and was likely to take several more months to complete.
"We have already questioned up to 100 people on both sides and it will take a long time to establish the truth," said Nana Lomayia.
She said excommunicated Orthodox priest Basil Mkalavishvili, who has led a vociferous campaign to outlaw other faiths, had been banned from leaving the capital.
Mkalavishvili is widely seen as the ringleader of the attacks and has even released his own video footage of some of the raids and beatings to local television stations.
Evangelical churches touting eternal salvation have flourished in turbulent post-Soviet Georgia, particularly among its poorest communities.
Georgia's constitution allows for freedom of religion and assembly, and is a member of the 43-nation Council of Europe, under whose auspices the European Court operates.
But like its counterpart in Russia, Georgia's powerful Orthodox church is unhappy about inroads made by other faiths. Orthodox patriarch Ilya II told followers to stay away from Roman Catholic masses in Tbilisi when Pope John Paul visited in November 1999.