Biography
On March 20, 2019, searches and interrogations of citizens in connection with their Christian beliefs resumed in Magadan. Sergey Agadzhanov became a new defendant in the criminal case against believers in Magadan, who by this time had already become 13. The investigation believes that he participated in worship services. What is known about him?
Sergey was born in 1957 in the village of Pervomaisky, Luhansk region of Ukraine. He has a younger sister and two adult sons. As a child, he was fond of modeling, worked as a driver for more than twenty years. Now retired, but does not like to sit idly by - he is engaged in apartment repairs, goes to the gym to maintain good physical shape.
Over the years, Sergey lived in Moscow, the Kaliningrad region and Yakutia. Recently he has been living in Magadan. In the 2000s, he was greatly impressed by the evidence that the Bible is God's Word.
Sergey's relatives cannot understand why a peaceful person is being prosecuted under criminal articles, although they understand that this is exactly what the Bible predicted.
Case History
After a series of searches in Magadan in May 2018, Konstantin Petrov, Yevgeniy Zyablov and Sergey Yerkin were placed in a pretrial detention center. On the same day in Khabarovsk, the home of Ivan Puyda was searched. He was arrested and taken 1,600 km to a pretrial detention center in Magadan. The believers spent 2 to 4 months behind bars, and then ended up under house arrest. In March 2019, the FSB conducted another series of searches. The number of defendants in the case has reached 13, including 6 women and elderly. The investigator deemed holding peaceful meetings for worship as organizing, participating in and financing the activity of an extremist organization. In almost 4 years of investigation, the case materials against the 13 believers has grown to 66 volumes. The case went to court in March 2022. At the hearings, it became clear that the case was based on the testimony of a secret witness – an FSB informant who made covert recordings of peaceful meetings for worship. In March 2024, the believers were given suspended sentences ranging from 3 to 7 years, and the court of appeal later upheld this verdict.
