Pechko Galina

Name: Pechko Galina Aleksandrovna
Date of Birth: March 1, 1954
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

In February 2021, another believer from Magadan, Galina Pechko, was accused of extremism. The criminal case against the pensioner turned out to be a source of stress for her and her family.

Galina was born in March 1954 in the village of Orlovsky on the shores of the Sea of Okhotsk (Khabarovsk Territory), whose inhabitants were later relocated to the neighboring village of Novaya Inya. Galina is the eldest of four children. Parents taught them kindness and hard work, the family often spent time together in nature. As a child, Galina was engaged in rhythmic gymnastics, sang and danced. At the age of 16, Galina went to Khabarovsk and graduated from a trade school there. In 1971 she married and gave birth to two sons. Later, the family moved to Chukotka in the city of Bilibino. She retired in 2004, and the children had started their own families by then. Now Galina already has two grandchildren. In 2006, she remarried, and the couple moved to Magadan.

From childhood, Galina wanted to learn more about God, but in the atheistic Soviet Union she did not succeed. Later, when more churches began to appear in the country, she began to visit various temples. However, she did not manage to get answers to questions about the Creator. In 2009, the woman began studying the Bible with Jehovah's Witnesses. According to her, this not only satisfied her needs for spiritual information, but also helped to save the marriage, which was on the verge of collapse.

Galina loves to spend time with her husband Victor, who also changed a lot after he learned biblical principles and began to apply them in life. The couple go fishing, go to the forest for barbecue.

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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