Kardakova Inna

Name: Kardakova Inna Alekseyevna
Date of Birth: August 2, 1980
Current status: convicted person
Articles of Criminal Code of Russian Federation: 282.2 (2)
Current restrictions: suspended sentence
Sentence: punishment in the form of 3 years of imprisonment, with deprivation of the right to engage in activities related to participation in the work of public religious organizations and associations for a term of 3 years, with restriction of liberty for a term of 10 months, a sentence of imprisonment shall be considered suspended with a probationary period of 3 years

Biography

Inna Kardakova became a defendant in a criminal case against Jehovah's Witnesses in Magadan in the spring of 2019. Five years later, the court gave her a three-year suspended sentence. A year and a half earlier, her younger brother Sergey, who was also convicted of extremism only because of his faith, was sent to a penal colony for more than 6 years.

Inna was born in 1980 in Blagoveshchensk, Amur Region. As a child, she was fond of volleyball, knitting and reading fiction, especially loved detective stories. Now her hobbies have not changed much: she still loves sports, plays volleyball, badminton, table tennis, and is also engaged in needlework. Inna is an accountant-economist by profession, she graduated from a municipal construction college and worked as an accountant for 12 years. For the last few years he has been living in Magadan.

Inna's grandmother, who professes Orthodoxy, instilled in her faith in God from childhood. Later, she and a friend mailed out a Bible. "At the same time, my parents were on a spiritual quest. However, their experiences did not resonate positively in my heart until I met people who had already developed strong faith in God. Their behavior, their kindness, their attitude towards me, and the steadfastness of their faith despite life's difficulties prompted me to learn more from the Bible and to begin to study it seriously on my own—the very book that I myself had subscribed to in the mail much earlier. I wanted to get this knowledge myself, I was looking for it myself, and I got it myself," Inna said.

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.
Timeline
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