FIVE cult members have been charged with serious offenses for beating a woman to death in May, prosecutors in a Shandong city announced Thursday.

Defendants Zhang Fan, Zhang Lidong and Lu Yinchun were charged with intentional homicide and the crime of sabotaging legal enforcement by organizing and using evil religion, while Zhang Hang and Zhang Qiaolian were charged with intentional homicide, according to Yantai People’s Procuratorate.

The five were members of the Quannengshen (Almighty God) cult, a group founded in 1990 in Central China’s Henan Province. The group claims that Jesus has been resurrected as Yang Xiangbin, wife of the sect’s founder Zhao Weishan, also known as Xu Wenshan. The couple fled to the United States in September 2000.

The sect has been widely criticized for spreading rumors and coercing people to join. In late October and early November 1998, robberies and assaults connected with the cult were reported over 12 days in Henan’s Tanghe County, with victims’ limbs broken and ears cut off.

The cult came into the spotlight when the five Quannengshen members beat a woman to death May 28 at a McDonald’s outlet in Shandong, after she refused to tell them her telephone number. The cult members were allegedly trying to recruit people.

(SD-Xinhua)