Minority religious groups are viewed by some Georgians as a threat to Georgian national identity, cultural values, and the GOC. Between 1999 and 2002, followers of a defrocked former GOC priest, Basil Mkalavishvili, attacked congregations of Jehovah's Witnesses and Baptists in Tbilisi. During 2012, some congregations of Muslims and Jehovah's Witnesses reported physical confrontations and verbal threats, some involving local GOC priests and their parishioners. In 2011, eight members of Orthodox fundamentalist groups were sentenced to prison for breaking into a television station and assaulting participants on a talk show on religious freedom; however, after the October 2012 parliamentary election and the transition to a new government, these individuals were reclassified as "prisoners of conscience" and were freed as part of a general amnesty.