SANTA CRUZ, BOLIVIA (BNO NEWS) -- A court in Bolivia has sentenced seven members of a Mennonite group to 25 years in prison for raping more than 150 women and girls, officials said on Friday.

The rapes happened in 2008 and 2009 in the Mennonite community of Manitoba, about 150 kilometers (93 miles) northeast of Bolivia's largest city of Santa Cruz.

According to the criminal investigation, the men sedated their victims with a chemical substance named Scopolamine before sexually abusing of them. The drug was supplied by an eight man, Peter Wiebe Wall, who was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment.

During the trial, which started on Tuesday, the prosecutor and the victims' lawyers were able to prove that the seven suspects were responsible for the rapes and that Wiebe had provided the sedative. However, the exact number of those raped is not clear.

The men were arrested on June 24, 2009 after the first reports of rapes were filed in the 2,000-strong Mennonite community. The victims are believed to have been between the ages of 9 and 50.

Mennonites are a conservative Christian group which follows strict moral codes, lives in isolated communities and rejects modern inventions such as cars and electricity. There are around 1.5 million Mennonites worldwide and an estimated 15,400 in Bolivia.