Court in Kabardino-Balkaria Acquitted One of Jehovah's Witnesses Accused of Extremism

On May 2, 2024, Ruslan Atakuyev, judge of the Mayskiy District Court of Kabardino-Balkaria, acquitted Kirill Gushchin, 42, finding him not guilty of extremism. The prosecutor had requested 7 years in a penal colony for the believer.

"I am not guilty," Gushchin said in his final statement. "I'm just making use of the freedom that Article 28 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation gives . . . Imagine that in Russia the football federations FIFA and UEFA [which are legal entities—Ed.] were declared extremist and banned. Will people stop playing football in Russia? Or will a group of people gathered to play football – adults, children, men, women – also be extremists?"

The prosecution of Kirill Gushchin began in May 2020, when the Investigative Committee initiated a criminal case against him for organizing the activity of an extremist organization. Masked security forces with machine guns detained the believer as he was about to go to work. Among them was FSB officer Sergey Svetikov, who has repeatedly been caught falsifying operational materials. During the search, planted publications, which are on the list of extremist literature, were also found in Gushchin's home.

In April 2021, Kirill was also charged with involving others in the activity of an extremist organization. A new criminal case against Kirill's wife, Svetlana Gushchina, was separated from this case. The charges against both are based on the testimony of secret witness "Filatova", who covertly made audio recordings of peaceful meetings for worship, at which nothing extremist happened.

This is not the first acquittal of Jehovah's Witnesses accused of extremism from Kabardino-Balkaria. Earlier, the court of cassation acquitted Yuriy Zalipayev from Mayskiy, and the Supreme Court of Kabardino-Balkaria overturned the conviction of Arkadya Akopyan from Prokhladniy, terminating the proceedings in his case.

Russian courts also acquitted the Bazhenovs, Ivan Sorokin and Andrey Zhukov, Dmitriy Barmakin, Aleksey Khabarov and three believers from the Sverdlovsk Region, but these decisions were subsequently overturned.