Name: Yefremova Svetlana Yevgeniyevna
Date of Birth: July 10, 1950
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 restriction of liberty for a period of 1 year, punishment in the form of imprisonment shall be considered conditional with a probationary period of 2 years

Biography

70-year-old Svetlana Yefremova has been adhering to her religious beliefs for about 30 years, so the fact that in April 2021 she was brought in as a defendant in a criminal case came as a surprise to many.

Svetlana was born in 1950 in Blagoveshchensk (Amur Oblast) in the family of an officer. She has a younger brother. Svetlana's school years were spent in Lesozavodsk (Primorsky Krai). Then she entered the Spassk Pedagogical School and received the specialty "primary school teacher". Later, while working at a garment factory, she was simultaneously trained as a process engineer at the Vladivostok Technological Institute of Light Industry. She continued to work at the factory until its closure in 1991. Having gone through years of unemployment, in 1996 Svetlana got a job in the social service, and after 9 years she retired.

In 1992, Svetlana started reading the Bible and realized that she wanted to better understand this book. Having become better acquainted with the biblical moral norms, Svetlana decided to follow them in her life. It brought her great joy to develop such Christian qualities as love, meekness, self-control. She still believes that love is the most important quality that must be shown even to her ill-wishers.

Today, her children are adults, she already has grandchildren. Although Svetlana's children do not share her religious beliefs, they maintain good relations with their mother and help her financially.

Case History

In May 2020, the investigation initiated a criminal case against Yevgeniy Grinenko, a resident of Lesozavodsk. He was accused of organizing the activity of an extremist community. On the same day, the homes of Yevgeniy and three other families were searched, and the believer himself was arrested. Two days later, he was placed in a detention center, where he spent almost 2 months, and then he was transferred to house arrest. Later, new defendants appeared in the case: Svetlana Yefremova, Sergey Kobelev and his mother Galina, whose case was later made into a separate proceeding. In September 2021, the case of Grinenko and the other believers went to court. The case was based on the testimony of an undercover FSB agent, Vladislav Mrachko, who secretly recorded his conversations about the Bible with the believers. In February 2023, the court concluded that the believers were guilty and gave Grinenko and Kobelev a 6-year suspended sentence and Svetlana Yefremova a 3-year suspended sentence. The court of appeal upheld the verdict.
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