Harry Potter cleared by Russian prosecutors

Prosecutors in Moscow have decided JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books do not incite religious hatred.

An investigation was launched there last week after claims the books “contained signs of religious extremism” and were “drawing students into religious groups of a Satanic type”.

But Svetlana Petrenko, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office, said today that they had found no basis for opening a criminal case.

Russia’s ITAR-Tass news agency said the original complaint was filed by the International Fund for Slavic Literature and Culture.

The Harry Potter books are hugely popular in Russia and have inspired a very similar local version with a hero named Tanya Grotter, causing Potter’s publishers to threaten a lawsuit for plagiarism.