Biography
In July 2018, security forces raided Anastasiya Polyakova and her husband Sergey. Masked men beat the believer, and then he and Anastasiya were placed in solitary confinement for 5 months. The reason for this was the religion of the spouses. In November 2020, the court found Anastasiya guilty of extremism and sentenced her to 2.5 years of probation. The court sent Sergey to a correctional colony for 3 years.
Anastasiya was born in 1984 in the Murmansk region. She has a secondary specialized legal education. In 2003 she married Sergey. The couple traveled a lot, together they were fond of studying Serbian, Kazakh, Chinese and Russian sign languages.
Numerous friends of the Polyakovs cannot believe that the couple were condemned as extremists only because of their faith in Jehovah God.
Case history
In 2018, the Polyakovs were arrested in Omsk. During the arrest, Sergei was beaten and forced to wipe his blood off the floor. The couple spent five months in solitary confinement and three months under house arrest. In 2019, the Investigative Committee again searched the houses of believers, and Gaukhar Bektemirova and Dinara Dyusekeyeva became defendants in the case. The court considered the case for almost a year. Evidence of guilt was even sought in cartoons seized during the search. In November 2020, Sergey Polyakov was sentenced to three years in a penal colony, and three women were given suspended sentences: Anastasiya Polyakova—two and a half years; Gaukhar Bektemirova—two years and three months; Dinara Dyusekeyeva—two years. In May 2021, the appeal court upheld the verdict, and in June 2022, this verdict was upheld by the cassation court. In November 2022, Sergei Polyakov was released after serving his full term in a penal colony, and in January 2023, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation partially granted Polyakov’s appeal regarding the term of his sentence.
