An appeals court in Oryol upheld the conviction of a second believer

On June 13, 2019, a panel of three judges of the Oryol Regional Court upheld the verdict of the district court, according to which Sergey Skrynnikov was sentenced to a large fine for his faith.

Earlier, on April 1, 2019, Gleb Noskov, judge of the Zheleznodorozhny District Court of Orel, announced his decision to find Sergey Skrynnikov guilty under the article "participation in the activities of an extremist organization" (part 2 of article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and sentence him to a fine in the amount of 350 thousand rubles. At the same time, the judge considered far-fetched the accusations of calls for the destruction of the family and non-recognition of authority, which were put forward against the believer by the investigators and prosecutors.

The case against Sergey Skrynnikov was separated from the criminal case of Dennis Christensen, whom the same court sent to a colony for 6 years.

A huge number of Russian and international figures and organizations unanimously condemn the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia. These include the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation, the Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation, the President of the Russian Federation, prominent public figures of Russia, the European Union External Action Service, observers of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. The Russian government has repeatedly stated that the decisions of the Russian courts on the liquidation and prohibition of organizations of Jehovah's Witnesses "do not assess the doctrine of Jehovah's Witnesses, do not contain a restriction or prohibition to practice the above teachings individually."