Court Fined Valeriy Schitz From Lesosibirsk 600,000 Rubles. This Is Already the 14th Sentence in the Region for Faith in Jehovah God

On June 24, 2024, Yevgeniy Rafalskiy, judge of the Lesosibirsk City Court, found Valeriy Schitz guilty of extremism. The believer, 58, whose family was repressed on ethnic grounds in the USSR, was sentenced to a large fine.

The Investigative Committee initiated a criminal case against Schitz in November 2021. He was accused of organizing the activity of an extremist organization. The evidence was based on hidden recordings of meetings for worship, in which Valeriy discusses Bible thoughts and says a prayer.

The homes of Schitz and several of his fellow believers were searched. They placed the believer under a recognizance agreement. In March 2023, after almost 1.5 years of investigation, the case went to court. At the hearing, two secret witnesses testified personally to the judge in a separate room. One of them stated that he did not know Valeriy Schitz and had never attended a meeting of Jehovah's Witnesses in Lesosibirsk. The defense noted that their testimonies were identical to those of secret witnesses in similar cases in the Krasnoyarsk Territory.

At the request of the state prosecutor, the court read out a copy of the verdict against Andrey Stupnikov, whose case has nothing to do with the case of Valeriy Schitz.

A total of 31 Jehovah's Witnesses in the Krasnoyarsk Territory have faced criminal prosecution for their faith, and sentences in 13 cases have already entered into force.