Extremist literature has been seized during a raid in Islamic institutions in Russia's second city of St. Petersburg, law enforcement bodies said on Monday.

"A large amount of literature in Russian and Arabic, as well as computers containing extremist information, has been seized during a search operation," a statement said published on the website of the St. Petersburg branch of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Prosecutor General's Office.

Yegor Ryabinin, 25, who is suspected of spreading extremist materials via the Internet, was detained. The man is suspected of organizing a group where members shared radical Islamic ideas in the popular Russian social network Vkontakte.

Search operations were held only in recently organized institutions, the head of St. Petersburg's Muslim spiritual administration said earlier. Many of these organizations have recently been opened in Petersburg; however, their leaders are usually immigrants without appropriate religious education. According to him, these organizations are illegal and have no links with the official religion.

ST. PETERSBURG, March 22 (RIA Novosti)