[{"body":"About 40–45 people attend the court hearing. Darya Petrochenko’s lawyer files a motion to return the case to the prosecutor’s office due to gross violations. For example, after the defendants reviewed volume 16 of the case (216 pages) and signed for it, some materials were excluded from the volume and more than 100 new pages were added — the volume increased to 385 pages. The defense also points to confusion regarding the surname of the key witness.\nJudge D. Merzlyakov denies the motion to return the case to the prosecutor’s office.\n","caseTitle":"Case of Murtuzov and Others in Moscow","date":"2026-05-25T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/moscow6/index.html#20260525","regions":["moscow"],"tags":["first-instance","fabrications","case-to-prosecutor","secret-witness"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"At the hearing, the former investigator A. Garmash, who was in charge of the case of Ushakov and other believers, is interrogated. The defense shows him the protocol of the interrogation of the \"Shepherd\", which was drawn up by Latysh in the case of Gadrshina, and asks him to compare it with his own. Garmash notes that the protocols are similar, including errors. According to the defense, this confirms that the Latvian did not interrogate the witness.\n","caseTitle":"The Case of Gadrshina in Vyselki","date":"2025-03-13T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/vyselki8/index.html#20250313","regions":["krasnodar"],"tags":["first-instance","interrogation","fabrications"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"A 70-year-old prosecution witness is interrogated, who tells how the night interrogation in the FSB went. \"My blood pressure rose, the letters blurred,\" the man recalls. \"One asks, the other walks, handcuffs him over his head and says: 'Stop messing with him, pack him up and take him, there he will tell you everything - what is necessary and what is not necessary.'\"\nThe court asks the witness to characterize the accused. He answers: \"In my life, I have met very few such people. They are highly moral people. I know very well how they treat their parents, how they take care of their families. This is rare.\"\n","caseTitle":"Case of Makhnev and Kuzin in Kaluga","date":"2025-02-24T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/kaluga/index.html#20250224","regions":["kaluga"],"tags":["first-instance","interrogation","fabrications"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"Witnesses are being questioned in court for several sessions. The testimonies of two more people are read out, since they have already died. Many of those interrogated have known Roman and Dmitriy for more than 20 years and have never heard extremist statements from them. In particular, one of the witnesses characterizes the defendants as decent, benevolent and moral people without bad habits.\nAnother witness states that he does not know Makhnev and Kuzin, and during the search, law enforcement officers at gunpoint forced him to sign blank forms of the interrogation protocol.\n","caseTitle":"Case of Makhnev and Kuzin in Kaluga","date":"2025-02-01T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/kaluga/index.html#20250201","regions":["kaluga"],"tags":["first-instance","interrogation","fabrications"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"Interrogation of Roman Latysh, the investigator who led the case. The defense believes that he made several falsifications. The lawyer asks him how it is possible to look through 23 discs with video recordings lasting 63 hours in three hours and compile 300 sheets of transcripts on them. \"These are my ways of examining objects and documents,\" the investigator answers.\nThe defense also notes that the protocol of the interrogation of the secret witness \"Pastor\", which was carried out by Latysh, coincides word for word with the protocol of interrogation conducted by another investigator, A. Garmash, in a similar case in Vyselki. To this, the Latvian replies that he does not remember the circumstances of the interrogation.\n","caseTitle":"The Case of Gadrshina in Vyselki","date":"2025-01-28T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/vyselki8/index.html#20250128","regions":["krasnodar"],"tags":["first-instance","interrogation","fabrications"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"The verdict against Maladyka, Sakada and Zhukov has been confirmed once and for all – the Fourth Court of Cassation of General Jurisdiction upholds the decisions of the lower instances. The defense still considers the sentence unjust.\nSome of the video recordings examined in the courts have clear signs of editing carried out under unclear circumstances. This justifiably makes them inadmissible evidence.\nThe defense notes that all forensic examinations and pre-trial investigations in the cases against Crimean Jehovah's Witnesses were carried out for a fee by the same non-profit organization, CMCE, and they were carried out by the same people and almost verbatim repeated each other (including errors, typos, punctuation marks, and the arrangement of words and lines in the text).\n","caseTitle":"The Case of Zhukov and Others in Sevastopol","date":"2024-12-19T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/sevastopol2/index.html#20241219","regions":["crimea"],"tags":["cassation","fabrications","studies-violations"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"Interrogation of prosecution witness Leonid Petrov, who is confused about the issue of acquaintance with the defendant. Aleksey Pasynkov himself says that he does not know this man and his testimony is a lie.\n","caseTitle":"The Case of Pasynkov in Mednogorskiy","date":"2024-10-16T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/mednogorskiy3/index.html#20241016","regions":["karachaevo"],"tags":["interrogation","first-instance","fabrications"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"Another witness states that his affidavit contains falsifications: the investigator added names that were not mentioned during the interrogation.\nAnother prosecution witness notes that communication with Jehovah's Witnesses helped her elderly relative cope with the pain of loss due to the death of her husband.\n","caseTitle":"The Case of Petrenko in Gorno-Altaysk","date":"2024-06-21T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/gorno-altaysk2/index.html#20240621","regions":["altai"],"tags":["first-instance","fabrications","disabled"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"Interrogation of a prosecution witness who had previously attended worship services. When asked by the judge about what is happening at the services, the witness answers: \"We discussed the Bible, communicated, nothing superfluous, an ordinary meeting of the congregation, which is not prohibited.\"\nThe witness does not confirm the preliminary testimony because it is partially unreliable. He says that at the time of the interrogation he was serving a sentence in a general regime colony and was pressured before the interrogation. According to him, investigator Belov and FSB Major Ryzhov threatened him with an increase in his sentence if he refused to testify.\n","caseTitle":"The Case of Kruglyakov and Others in Syktyvkar","date":"2024-05-29T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/syktyvkar/index.html#20240529","regions":["komi"],"tags":["first-instance","interrogation","fabrications"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"The court is interrogating several convicts who served their sentences in IK-1 in the Kostroma region together with Terebilov. During the interrogation of one of the witnesses, discrepancies with the testimony recorded by the investigator are revealed.\n","caseTitle":"The Second Case of Terebilov in Kostroma","date":"2024-05-20T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/kostroma4/index.html#20240520","regions":["kostroma"],"tags":["first-instance","interrogation","fabrications"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"Three prosecution witnesses are being questioned. One woman does not corroborate the testimony given during the investigation. She says she didn't sign them because they didn't match her words.\n","caseTitle":"The Case of Petrenko in Gorno-Altaysk","date":"2024-05-17T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/gorno-altaysk2/index.html#20240517","regions":["altai"],"tags":["first-instance","fabrications"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"The defense proceeds to present its evidence to the court.\nThe court satisfies the motion of the defense to view the video materials obtained in the course of operational-search activities. On one of the recordings of the service, there is a discussion of the topics: \"Look to the future with faith and courage\", \"Help those who are struggling.\"\nCommenting on one of the videos, Natalia Sharapova states that she recognized a woman who was interrogated in court under the pseudonym \"Yolka\", and draws the court's attention to the inconsistency of her testimony. So, Yolka told the court that she met Sharapova only in 2020, but in fact she was visiting the Sharapovs in 2018 and kept a secret video recording of the service. The recording shows how the Christmas tree talks with Natalia's mother\n","caseTitle":"The Case of Andreyev and Others in Yaroslavskiy","date":"2024-05-14T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/yaroslavskiy/index.html#20240514","regions":["primorye"],"tags":["first-instance","fabrications"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"On April 3, 2024, the Samara Regional Court upheld the verdict of Sona Olopova — 2 years of forced labor. The court deemed her participation in joint Bible discussions via video link to be extremism.\nIn her appeal, Sona noted that the court of first instance did not consider ordinary religious practice as exercising the right to freedom of practicing the religion of Jehovah\u0026#39;s Witnesses, which the RF Supreme Court did not prohibit. Instead, in the opinion of the believer, only the fact of professing the religion was enough for the court to pass a sentence. The court did not clarify or establish any other circumstances. In her final statement before the judicial panel, she said: \u0026quot;The materials of my criminal case do not contain a single criminal act, not a single statement against the state, against people of other religions or against people of other nationalities.\u0026quot;\nThe \u0026quot;evidence\u0026quot; included an expert study from another criminal case, in which Olopova is not even mentioned, as well as the testimony of a secret witness who claimed that Sona was distributing banned literature but had not seen it himself.\nIn the Samara Region, 10 Jehovah\u0026#39;s Witnesses have already been prosecuted for their faith, five of whom have been sentenced to imprisonment for terms from 7 to 8 years.\n","category":"verdict","date":"2024-04-03T00:00:00Z","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2024/04/051403/image_hu_2496c7ce11997d4b.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2024/04/051403/image_hu_9202fff57af9c7a4.jpg","webp":"/news/2024/04/051403/image_hu_462d5534496f5ff5.webp","webp2x":"/news/2024/04/051403/image_hu_72b67071c2a26a0a.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2024/04/051403.html","regions":["samara"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["appeal","labor","282.2-2","secret-witness","fabrications","studies-violations"],"title":"The Sentence of Sona Olopova from Tolyatti Entered Into Force After an Appeal — Two Years of Forced Labor for Believing in Jehovah God","type":"news"},{"body":"Aleksey Gerasimov, 43, one of Jehovah\u0026#39;s Witnesses convicted for his faith, will be sent to a penal colony anyway. The decision to uphold the verdict against the believer was made on March 22, 2024 by a panel of judges of the Supreme Court of Tatarstan, chaired by Marsel Fakhriyev.\nAleksey Gerasimov attended the hearing via video conference from the detention center. He has been in custody since December 2023, when the Kirovskiy District Court of Kazan sentenced him to 6 years imprisonment, finding him guilty of extremism for continuing to practice the religion of Jehovah\u0026#39;s Witnesses – he participated in peaceful religious meetings and public discussions of the Bible.\nThe verdict was appealed. As stated in the appeal of Gerasimov\u0026#39;s lawyer, among other things, \u0026quot;the court of first instance did not apply the principle of the adversarial system and equality of the parties, since the presiding judge deprived the defense of the right to defend against false testimonies given by secret witnesses.\u0026quot;\nThe point is that the investigation and the prosecutor built the line of accusation based on the false testimony of Aleksandr Komzolov, who attended meetings of Jehovah\u0026#39;s Witnesses in the past. These testimonies are repeated verbatim in the materials of several other similar cases against believers in Kazan. Even grammatical errors are the same. According to Aleksey\u0026#39;s wife Natalia Gerasimova, she and her husband were not familiar with Komzolov and, contrary to his testimony, never communicated with him. In connection with the falsifications, Natalia filed a complaint with the Investigative Committee of Russia and the Prosecutor General\u0026#39;s Office of the Russian Federation against the actions of Ilnar Izmailov, an employee of the Center for Counteracting Extremism, and A. Geniyatullin, an investigator of the Investigative Committee, who were involved in her husband\u0026#39;s case.\nEarlier, in his final statement to the court of first instance, the believer drew attention to the absence of any evidence of his guilt: \u0026quot;There is not a single victim in my case, which is confirmed by the case materials and the witness testimonies. During the entire trial, the prosecution did not indicate where, when, or in the presence of whom I said or did anything that incriminated me according to any article for extremism.\u0026quot; Aleksey Gerasimov still insists on his innocence.\nAs of March 2024, 13 Jehovah\u0026#39;s Witnesses in Tatarstan have faced criminal prosecution for their faith, two of them are serving sentences in a penal colony, and nine more have received suspended sentences.\n","category":"verdict","date":"2024-03-22T00:00:00Z","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2024/03/261511/image_hu_7ba5ddb4c4f84f81.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2024/03/261511/image_hu_114c01be806881ad.jpg","webp":"/news/2024/03/261511/image_hu_5d765d3e5a5b68e4.webp","webp2x":"/news/2024/03/261511/image_hu_65b66a0aff9d95d9.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2024/03/261511.html","regions":["tatarstan"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["appeal","282.2-1","liberty-deprivation","fabrications"],"title":"Court of Appeal in Tatarstan Upheld the Sentence of Aleksey Gerasimov From Kazan - 6 Years in a Penal Colony","type":"news"},{"body":"A witness for the prosecution, a neighbor of Valery Rabota, is being interrogated. She describes him as a calm, balanced person, not seen in conflicts, and notes that Valery helped her with the housework. They did not talk about religious topics. The court reads out her affidavit, the woman does not confirm them.\nFSB officer Ogienko, who conducted the ORM, is also being interrogated. He explains that he did not personally witness any crime on the part of Valery; I have not heard any statements related to inciting enmity and hatred towards any religious group or nation.\n","caseTitle":"The Case of Valeriy Rabota in Knyaze-Volkonskoye","date":"2024-02-05T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/knyaze-volkonskoe/index.html#20240205","regions":["khabarovsk"],"tags":["first-instance","interrogation","fabrications"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"Prosecution witnesses are summoned to court. One of them talks about his acquaintance with the embedded FSB agent Stanislav Martyn, who collected information about Valery Rabota. His testimony given during the preliminary investigation is announced, the witness himself does not confirm them.\nThe next to be questioned is the witness Romanov, who knows the defendant well. According to him, he did not speak negatively about other religions and they talked about the Bible for a long time - in the period from 2008 to 2012.\n","caseTitle":"The Case of Valeriy Rabota in Knyaze-Volkonskoye","date":"2024-01-30T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/knyaze-volkonskoe/index.html#20240130","regions":["khabarovsk"],"tags":["first-instance","interrogation","fabrications"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"Hearings in the case of Valery Rabota in the new composition of the court begin. The case is being considered by judge Maria Luzhbina.\n","caseTitle":"The Case of Valeriy Rabota in Knyaze-Volkonskoye","date":"2024-01-18T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/knyaze-volkonskoe/index.html#20240118","regions":["khabarovsk"],"tags":["first-instance","interrogation","fabrications"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"In 2023, the number of Russian Jehovah’s Witnesses criminally prosecuted for their faith reached almost 800, and the number of searches exceeded 2,000. Cases are fabricated against the elderly, women and the disabled. More than a quarter of all prosecuted are persons over 60 years of age. By the end of the year, there were already six Jehovah’s Witness women in penal colonies. The tendency to prosecute entire families has increased. The length of imprisonment requested by prosecutors has reached 10 years. Statistics and details are included in this article. The Year in Numbers As of December 25, 2023, the total number of homes of Russian Jehovah’s Witnesses searched is 2,058. In 2023, law enforcement officers raided 183 addresses, 43 people were detained, 15 of whom have been or are still in pretrial detention. During the year, Russian courts issued rulings regarding 147 Jehovah’s Witnesses, 47 of whom were sentenced to imprisonment for a cumulative term of more than 257 years (the previous year 44 people were sentenced to a cumulative term of 244 years in penal colonies). Thirty-three people received sentences in penal colonies of 6 years or more. Of these, the longest term of 8 years in a penal colony was given to Dmitriy Barmakin, whose story will be discussed below. On December 22, 2023, the court sentenced Aleksandr Rumyantsev from Moscow to 7.5 years in penal colony (Sean Pike, a citizen of Guyana, and Eduard Sviridov from Moscow, are in the same case and were sentenced to 7 and 6.5 years in a penal colony, respectively). Astrakhan residents Rinat Kiramov, Sergey Korolev and Sergey Kosyanenko, as well as Aleksandr Skvortsov from Taganrog and Evgeniy Bushev from Chelyabinsk received 7 years of imprisonment. In the Bushev case, it took the court just five sessions to conclude that talking about a Bible topic is such a serious crime. Later, it turned out that an officer of the National Guard had participated in the conversation, pretending to be interested in the Bible. On December 19, 2023, a court in Novosibirsk sentenced Marina Chaplykina to 4 years in a penal colony. She became the sixth woman from among Russian Jehovah’s Witnesses to receive a prison sentence for their faith.\nEight of Jehovah’s Witnesses were released from prison this past year. Seventy-nine people remain in penal colonies.\n\"The believers trials do not end with being released from the penal colony,\" explains Yaroslav Sivulskiy, a representative of the European Association of Jehovah’s Witnesses. \"The believers continue to serve additional punishments. For example, during a period appointed by the court, they cannot leave their place of residence. An electronic tracking bracelet is put on the ankle of some for many months, by which the authorities track the location of the person. This device must not be removed. After serving their sentences many are forbidden from working in certain areas, such as education.\"\nThe total number of criminal cases initiated against believers since 2017 has reached 376. The defendants amount to 789 people; 444 believers were convicted, 141 of whom received imprisonment. In all cases, there are no victims, actual crimes or evidence of illegal actions. The cases are initiated for ordinary religious activities: praying, reading the Bible, singing religious songs, etc. Most of the Jehovah’s Witnesses who are prosecuted for their faith are included in the list of extremists and terrorists maintained by the Federal Financial Monitoring Service (Rosfinmonitoring). The state imposes a number of serious economic restrictions on those who are listed on it; for example, their bank accounts are blocked, which makes it difficult to receive salaries, pensions and complete other transactions. At the time of publication of this article, there are 521 believers on the list, 72 of whom were added to the list in 2023.\nTerms are Breaking Records In Magadan, the case of 13 believers, including Ivan Puyda, the son and grandson of Jehovah’s Witnesses who had been repressed under Soviet rule, reached its conclusion. Now he too could receive a lengthy sentence – 10 years. That is how much the prosecutor requested in the closing arguments on November 24, 2023.\nIf Puyda gets 10 years in prison, it will be a unprecedented record in the cases of Russian Jehovah’s Witnesses. Currently, the maximum term in a penal colony is 8 years, and five believers are serving this: Aleksey Berchuk, Rustam Diarov, Yevgeniy Ivanov and Sergey Klikunov.\nOn December 4, 2023, in Irkutsk, the prosecutor requested terms ranging from 3 to 7 years for a group of nine Jehovah’s Witnesses, the longest for Yaroslav Kalin, Nikolay Martynov, Aleksey Solnechny and Sergey Kosteyev. Yaroslav Kalin also comes from a family of those repressed for their faith. Kalin’s lawyer said: \"My client is being tried for the same thing for which his parents were exiled to Siberia, more than 70 years ago.\" Ironically, Kalin’s parents have been officially exonerated, but their son is now being tried for the same \"crime\".\nNew Regions In 2023, the territory affected by prosecutions has expanded. In February, the first searches in the Leningrad Region took place in the cities of Kingisepp and Slantsy, five people were detained and a criminal case was initiated. On April 4, 2023, searches were carried out for the first time in St. Petersburg.\nAt the end of February, searches in at least three addresses took place in Elista, the capital of Kalmykia. Kishta Tutinova, 62, was detained, and after 2 days behind bars she was placed under house arrest.\nIn total, Jehovah’s Witnesses are already being prosecuted in 74 regions of the Russian Federation.\nVladimir Piskarev, Vladimir Melnik and Artur Putintsev were kept in a cage during their trial in Oryol Aleksandr Skortsov and Valeriy Tibiy did not lose heart despite unjust prosecution Konstantin Sannikov in the so-called \u0026#34;aquarium\u0026#34; — an enclosure where usually especially dangerous criminals are held during the trial During the announcement of the verdict, the bailiff handcuffs the seriously ill Vladimir Balabkin Sergey Klimov with his wife immediately after his release from the penal colony Defendants in the case of Tchaikovsky and others in Moscow are taken into custody after the verdict is announced Aleksandr Nikolayev with his wife and daughters after his release from the penal colony Convicted residents of Gukovo communicate via video call from the pretrial detention center with the group of supporters that came to the cassation hearing On the day of Yuriy Savelyev’s release from the penal colony, he was met by a large group of supporters Rustam Seidkuliev’s wife and friends are taking pictures with him after his release from the penal colony in Saratov From left to right: Sergey Kosyanenko, Rinat Kiramov and Sergey Korolev behind bars in the courtroom Muscovites Anatoliy Marunov, Sergey Tolokonnikov and Roman Mareyev were sentenced to long terms for their faith In Surgut, friends came to the courthouse to support their convicted fellow believers, on the day of the verdict. Outdoor temperature was -29°C Marina married Sergey Shulyarenko, convicted for his faith, right in the penal colony Prosecution of the Elderly and Disabled Almost 26% of Russian Jehovah’s Witnesses who have been prosecuted for their faith since 2017 (205 people) are over 60 years old. Criminal cases were initiated against 17 believers in this category in 2023. The oldest of them is 85 years old (the youngest is 19 years old).\nLaw enforcement officers and judges are not troubled by the age, serious illnesses or disabilities of those they accuse. So, on September 13 of this year, a court in the Amur Region sentenced Vladimir Balabkin, 71, suffering from cancer, to 4 years in a penal colony (the prosecutor had requested 2.5 times longer). Immediately after the verdict, he was taken into custody. About three months later, on December 19, 2023, the court of appeal replaced the sentence with a a 1-year suspended sentence, and the believer was released.\nOn September 14, 2023, the Maykop City Court sent 68-year-old Nikolay Voishchev to a penal colony. Even before his arrest, he was diagnosed with a tumor that required immediate treatment. While in prison he is not receiving the adequate medical care he still needs.\nIn the Novosibirsk Region, Andrey Vlasov, a 54-year-old disabled person, continues to serve his sentence for his faith. He suffers from serious illnesses, including deforming arthrosis of both hip joints, which makes it impossible for him to take care of himself. But both the court of appeal and the court of cassation upheld the guilty verdict.\nRepression of Entire Families By the end of the year, more than 70 families in 35 regions of the Russian Federation had become easy prey for law enforcement officers, for whom this is often an easy way to improve their performance and move up the career ladder. In some cases, the husband and wife were sent to prison at the same time, for example, Yelena and Georgiy Nikulin from Saransk. Both received more than 4 years in a penal colony.\n\"Other family members who are not under investigation are also subjected to direct or indirect pressure. After the searches, the security forces interrogate them, threaten to imprison them or a relative if they do not begin to give the investigation the testimony requested against their relative and fellow believers. Simply put, they are invited to become secret agents, to conduct covert audio and video recordings of how believers discuss Bible teachings, pray and sing religious songs together, in order to later call it \"the activity of a banned religious organization,\" says Yaroslav Sivulskiy. \"Another form of indirect pressure on relatives is denying visits to imprisoned family members.\"\nReversal of Acquittals One of the significant trends of 2023 was canceling the acquittals of Jehovah’s Witnesses. This happened on July 6, 2023, with the case of Aleksandr Pryanikov and Venera and Darya Dulova; the case reached the Supreme Court, which overturned the acquittal, although before that the Sverdlovsk Regional Court had twice overturned the guilty verdicts.\nIn the case of Ivan Sorokin and Andrey Zhukov in Yugorsk, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Region, the acquittal was overturned on November 20, 2023.\nDmitriy Barmakin from Vladivostok became the first Russian Jehovah’s Witness to be acquitted in a criminal case for his faith on November 22, 2021. This decision lasted only until April 27, 2023, when the same court, the Pervorechensky District Court of Vladivostok, sentenced the believer to 8 years in a penal colony. However, later, on August 8, 2023, the Primorsky Regional Court overturned this decision and sent the case for review.\nAleksey Khabarov from Porkhov, Pskov Region, who was initially acquitted, was sentenced at the third trial on October 25, 2023, to 2 years and 6 months in a penal colony. The court of appeal reduced the term by only 2 months.\nThe Supreme Court Does Not Comply With Its Own Judgement It seems paradoxical that acquittals of Jehovah’s Witnesses are consistently overturned by the Supreme Court, whose position is that meeting for worship in itself cannot be considered a crime (in the cases of Jehovah’s Witnesses, this is the only corpus delicti). On October 28, 2021, the Plenum of the Supreme Court published a ruling stating: \"If a court adopts a decision, which enters into force, to liquidate or ban the activity of a public or religious association or other organization regarding extremist activity, subsequent actions of persons that are not related to the continuation or resumption of the activity of the relevant extremist organization and consist solely in exercising their right to freedom of conscience and freedom of religion, including through individual or joint practice of religion, meetings for worship or other religious rites and ceremonies, in themselves, if they do not contain signs of extremism, do not constitute a crime\" (emphasis added).\nHowever, in practice, some judges of the Supreme Court do not consider it necessary to follow this position. They simply repeat the prosecution’s narrative that any collective practice of worship by Jehovah’s Witnesses is \"extremist.\"\nIn total, the Supreme Court has already overturned two acquittals of Jehovah’s Witnesses. In addition to the above-mentioned case of Pryanikov and the Dulovs, a similar decision was made on December 15, 2022 in the case of the Bazhenovs and Vera Zolotova.\nJudgments of the European Court of Human Rights On January 31, 2023, the European Court of Human Rights considered seven applications by Jehovah’s Witnesses from Russia relating to events from 2010 to 2014. In all of them, the court sided with the applicants and ordered Russia to pay compensation in the amount of 345,773 euros and another 5,000 euros as legal costs.\nThis is the second judgement of the ECHR in the case of Russian Jehovah’s Witnesses in the last 2 years. In the summer of 2022, the ECHR also exonerated believers in a larger lawsuit related to the illegal liquidation of all legal entities of the Witnesses and the seizure of their property. The total amount of compensation under this decision exceeds 63 million euros.\nAlas, so far the decisions of the ECHR have no visible impact on the practice of the Russian law enforcement system. The Russian authorities are in no hurry to pay compensation to exonerated believers, and continue to sentence them to long prison terms.\nExactly on the day of the decision of the ECHR, June 7, 2022, the State Duma of the Russian Federation adopted laws under an accelerated procedure, according to which ECHR judgments issued after March 15, 2022 are not enforceable in Russia.\n\u0026quot;The Case of the Eighteen\u0026quot; in Surgut: Faith is a Crime, Torture is Heroism In 2023, a high-profile case in Surgut approached its conclusion, which received wide publicity because the believers were tortured. The case against 18 men and one woman from Surgut, including a man whom the investigation mistakenly mistook for one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, has been dragging on since February 2019. Seven defendants went through severe torture during interrogation, and one of them, Timofey Zhukov, was forcibly placed in a psychiatric hospital and later obtained compensation for this. The torture in Surgut was widely covered in the Russian media; the believers met with the Human Rights Ombudsman for the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Region and employees of the offices of the Human Rights Ombudsman of the Russian Federation and conferences were held with the participation of human rights defenders.\nIn November 2023, the prosecutor requested harsh terms for the believers \u0026ndash; up to 9.5 years in a penal colony (for Sergey Loginov). On December 5, 2023, all the defendants in the Surgut case were given suspended sentences ranging from 4 to 7 years. Sergey Loginov and Timofey Zhukov were given the longest sentences of 7 years.\nAt the same time, not a single criminal case has been initiated for the torture of the believers. Moreover, later the head of the Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee, where Jehovah’s Witnesses were tortured, Vladimir Yermolaev and his subordinate Sergey Bogoderov received awards, and the soldiers of the National Guard of Russia who participated in the operation were rewarded.\n\"Have They Succeeded in Intimidating Jehovah’s Witnesses?\" Sergei Ivanenko, Ph.D. in Philosophy, a religious scholar who attended as an expert at 14 judicial trials against Jehovah’s Witnesses in different regions of Russia, writes his impressions in his book \"The People Who Are Steadfast in Persecution\" published in 2023: \"Jehovah’s Witnesses... consider it their religious responsibility to preach Christianity to law enforcement officials, judges, and also to prisoners... Have they succeeded in intimidating Jehovah’s Witnesses? No, they have not. They continue to preach, to help each other, and to support prisoners of conscience. According to the believers, persecution strengthens their faith in Jehovah, and strong faith brings inner peace... Those who know the history of Jehovah's Witnesses understand that they have endured the most severe persecution and have not forsaken their faith. Nor does persecution in today's Russia frighten them.\"\n","category":"analytics","date":"2023-12-27T13:08:20+02:00","duration":"1:56","image":{"jpg":"/news/2023/12/271308/image2_hu_8ce5188d4fbb9f2c.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2023/12/271308/image2_hu_7d61162a90e88d55.jpg","webp":"/news/2023/12/271308/image2_hu_c30bde6a69fa6960.webp","webp2x":"/news/2023/12/271308/image2_hu_7cb627d2f70ce16.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2023/12/271308.html","regions":[],"subtitle":null,"tags":["search","elderly","disability","video","rosfinmonitoring","medical-rights","siloviks-violence","torture","international","supreme-court","echr","international-community","expert-conclusions","fabrications","statistics","analytics","review"],"title":"Jehovah’s Witnesses Under the Yoke of Repression — 2023 Overview","type":"video"},{"body":"The court is interrogating Nikolay Saparov. He says that after his detention at the Mineralnye Vody airport, he was subjected to violence, including the use of a stun gun, who was forced to take the blame for extremism. According to the believer, he was pushed into a car and taken about 300 km to the law enforcement department in Adygea. Along the way, he was beaten and intimidated.\nAfter the interrogations, first in the building of the local department of the Federal Security Service, and later in the building of the branch of the Investigative Committee, Nikolai Saparov was taken to his home for a search, which, according to the defendant and his lawyer, took place with violations, including without witnesses. As a result, investigators \"found\" documents and items in Saparov's house that did not belong to him.\nThe lawyer filed a motion to exclude the search protocol from the case file, arguing that the search at Saparov's place of residence was carried out by the investigating authorities with numerous violations of the criminal procedure legislation. The defender draws the court's attention to the fact that investigator Shnakhov allowed the uncontrolled movement of operational officers around the house, which is a significant violation. This does not exclude the planting of documents and objects that were \"discovered\" in Saparov's house. The judge rejects the motion of the defense to exclude the search protocol from the case file.\n","caseTitle":"The Case of Saparov in Maykop","date":"2023-11-28T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/maykop2/index.html#20231128","regions":["adygea"],"tags":["first-instance","interrogation","fabrications","plant","siloviks-violence","torture"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"A court gave Vladimir Baikalov, 60, a 6-year suspended sentence for talking about the Bible with friends. This decision was made on October 23, 2023, by Marina Romanina, judge of the Zavodsky District Court of the city of Kemerovo. The state prosecutor requested the believer be sent to a penal colony for 7 years.\n\"I used to teach people how to fight, and now I teach them to love,\" said former boxing coach Vladimir Baykalov, emphasizing the absurdity of the charge. \"[Before becoming one of Jehovah's Witnesses], I devoted many years to boxing, even though it was not only my dream job, but it was my life... The Bible taught me, instead of aggression, to show love to people and instead of causing pain, it [nurtured] a desire and willingness to help. This is the complete opposite of extremism, hatred or enmity.\"\nAleksandra Isayeva, investigator of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, initiated a criminal case in February 2022. A day later, Baykalov's home was searched. The law enforcement officers equated peaceful conversations about God to organizing the activity of an extremist organization. However, there is no evidence in the case of calls or statements on the part of Vladimir promoting extremism. The witnesses who spoke in court, also did not hear anything like this from Baykalov. At least one of them stated that the protocol of his interrogation was falsified. The believer drew the court's attention to the comments of the officers to the transcripts of the audio recordings of the meetings for worship: \"Conversations of any relevance to the operation have not been recorded.\" The audio recordings show believers discussing the importance of following Bible standards and displaying qualities such as modesty and humility.\nEven before the court proceedings, Vladimir Baykalov was twice subjected to a psychiatric examination. According to the believer, during one of them, the doctor who cooperated with the investigation, exerted strong psychological pressure on him and threatened him with forced hospitalization, trying to force Baykalov to incriminate himself.\nVladimir said that friends helped him and his wife to cope with all the difficulties. \"You just can't do without their help in these difficult times. They shared encouraging thoughts and provided tremendous support at court hearings. Once the prosecutor said: \"There are so many listeners – who are they to you?\" I replied: \"They are relatives and friends.\" He was surprised. Also, immediately after the search, fellow believers helped us financially.\"\nThe verdict has not entered into force and can be appealed.\nIn Kuzbass, 15 cases have been initiated against Jehovah's Witnesses. The sentences of 11 believers have already entered into force. Two of them, Sergey Ananin and Andrey Vlasov, are serving long sentences in a penal colony.\n","category":"verdict","date":"2023-10-23T15:53:06+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2023/10/231553/image_hu_67746f0027cca803.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2023/10/231553/image_hu_ef713093b5ea55f8.jpg","webp":"/news/2023/10/231553/image_hu_f8ce20aa04a30987.webp","webp2x":"/news/2023/10/231553/image_hu_542158d7cae5084c.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2023/10/231553.html","regions":["kemerovo"],"subtitle":"Court in Kemerovo Found Vladimir Baykalov Guilty of Extremism","tags":["282.2-1","suspended","fabrications","studies-violations","elderly"],"title":"Suspended Sentence of 6 Years for Faith in Jehovah God.","type":"news"},{"body":"On September 5, 2023, Sergey Kamenov, judge of the Nizhnekamsk City Court of the Republic of Tatarstan gave a 6-year suspended sentence to Denis Filatov, Stanislav Klyuchnikov and Dmitriy Yarchak, who has had a disability since childhood. The court deemed praying and singing religious songs to be extremism.\nThe verdict has not entered into force and can be appealed. The believers maintain their complete innocence.\nIn November 2020, the Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Republic of Tatarstan initiated a criminal case and conducted a series of searches in Nizhnekamsk. An investigation was launched against the three men, which lasted 14 months. In January 2022, the case went to court, where it was considered for a further 19 months. All this time, the believers were under a recognizance agreement. Several witnesses summoned to court for questioning stated that they gave testimony to the investigator under pressure and threats from law enforcement officers, and one woman reported that the investigator arbitrarily added words to the protocol that she did not say. The main part of the charges is based on the testimony of a secret witness.\nSpeaking in court, the believers explained that the RF Supreme Court did not ban the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses. Klyuchnikov said: \"I think that the preliminary investigation agencies are incorrectly and arbitrarily interpreting the decision of the Supreme Court. And the reason I am on trial today, is their misinterpretation, and not the crime I allegedly I committed.\" Denis Filatov added: \"The episodes of participating in meetings for worship imputed to me can only indicate exercising the right to practice my religion and use methods of expressing faith that were not prohibited.\" Dmitriy Yarchak also said: \"While being peaceful and observing the law, I use the right guaranteed by Article 28 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation.\"\nIn Tatarstan, 13 more people have faced prosecution for their faith in Jehovah God. One of them, Konstantin Sannikov, has been sentenced to 6.5 years imprisonment.\n","category":"verdict","date":"2023-09-05T00:00:00Z","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2023/09/061348/image_hu_79fd63216177be1c.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2023/09/061348/image_hu_5dbafb43e3ab5e03.jpg","webp":"/news/2023/09/061348/image_hu_c831c324eae6e89c.webp","webp2x":"/news/2023/09/061348/image_hu_ff618fc682ee1aea.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2023/09/061348.html","regions":["tatarstan"],"subtitle":"The Court Found Them Guilty of Extremism for Their Faith in God ","tags":["282.2-1","sentence","fabrications","disability","secret-witness","suspended"],"title":"In Tatarstan, Three of Jehovah's Witnesses Were Given Long Suspended Sentences.","type":"news"},{"body":"On August 15, 2023, Tatyana Kovaleva, judge of the Tayga City Court of the Kemerovo Region, sentenced Yuriy Usanov and Maksim Morozov to 3 years in a penal colony for their faith. But since the term is considered to have already been served while they were in pretrial detention, the believers were released. More than 60 listeners, who were admitted to the courtroom reacted to the decision with applause.\nThe believers faced prosecution on religious grounds in early April 2021, when the Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Kemerovo Region — Kuzbass initiated a criminal case against Yuriy Usanov, charging him with holding meetings of believers via video conferencing. After the searches that took place the next day, Usanov was detained and placed in a pretrial detention center. After 4 months, Maksim Morozov was also put behind bars. According to him, the investigation presented them with video recordings of meetings at which the Bible was discussed and prayers to God were said, as proof of their \"involvement in extremism\".\nUsanov spent more than 2 years behind bars and Morozov - 2 years and 9 days. Yuriy Usanov was in solitary confinement for the last 9 months before the verdict. His wedding was scheduled for July 2021, and had to be held in the pretrail detention center. Officers of the Anzhero-Sudzhensk detention center said that such a thing “has never been seen here before.” The administration of the pretrial detention center allowed the newlyweds to talk for 5 minutes after the marriage was registered; following this Yuriy's wife, Irina, was not permitted to visit him for about a year.\nAfter almost a year of preliminary investigation, the case went to court. At the hearings falsifications were revealed: the testimony of two witnesses for the prosecution was identical, including even spelling errors; another woman stated that words she had not said appeared in her interrogation protocol. In court, she described the believers as kind, humble, and patient people. Despite this, the prosecutor requested 5 years and 2 months in a penal colony and 7 months of additional restrictions for Usanov, 31, and Morozov, 40. The verdict passed by the court has not entered into force and can be appealed.\nMaksim Morozov addresses the court with his final statement. August 2023 Yuriy Usanov and Maksim Morozov behind bars in the courtroom. August 2023 Irina and Yuriy Usanov outside the court. August 2023 Maksim Morozov and the Usanovs after the verdict announcement. August 2023 Friends who came to support Morozov and Usanov on the day of the verdict. August 2023 A few days before the verdict was passed, the state prosecutor reclassified the charge as participating in the activity of an extremist organization, having found no confirmation of actions of an \"organizational nature.\" This facilitated the punishment being mitigated and the speedy release of the believers.\nThe court found Morozov and Usanov guilty of committing the crime specified in Article 282.2(2) of the RF CrC and sentenced them to imprisonment for 3 years with additional restriction of freedom for 6 months (not to change the place of residence or stay without the consent of a specialized state body exercising supervision, and also not to travel outside the territory of the city district without its consent — Tayga for Usanov, and Tolyatti for Morozov). The believers' period of detention was taken into consideration at the rate of 1 day for 1.5 days.\nTo date, 19 Jehovah's Witnesses, including 3 women, have been subjected to religious repression in the Kemerovo Region. Recently, a harsh sentence was passed against a believer with a disability, Andrey Vlasov. His illness worsens rapidly due to prison conditions. According to the law, he should not be detained.\nThe world community and the RF Supreme Court stated that \"the joint performance of rites and ceremonies [of Jehovah's Witnesses] does not in itself constitute a crime under Article 282.2 of the RF CrC, despite the liquidation of their legal entities.\"\n","category":"verdict","date":"2023-08-15T14:53:36+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2023/08/151453/image_hu_d82d4d9ef96e6fd6.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2023/08/151453/image_hu_4655f03454d79874.jpg","webp":"/news/2023/08/151453/image_hu_53fd52627be6271.webp","webp2x":"/news/2023/08/151453/image_hu_e769f8d1bf0f4dc9.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2023/08/151453.html","regions":["kemerovo"],"subtitle":"Yuriy Usanov and Maksim Morozov Are Free","tags":["sentence","282.2-2","fabrications"],"title":"Court in Tayga Sentenced Two Jehovah's Witnesses to 3 Years in a Penal Colony, but Considered the Term Already Served.","type":"news"},{"body":"An audio recording of a worship service is played in court, where an Gospel episode from the life of Jesus Christ is discussed.\nSobyanin and Timoshkin say that at least some of the remarks attributed to them are made by other people. The defendants draw attention to the fact that at the beginning and end of the recording there is a song and a prayer, which once again proves that this is a divine service, and not a meeting of legal entities.\n","caseTitle":"The Case of Poltoradnev and Others in Solikamsk","date":"2023-06-20T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/solikamsk/index.html#20230620","regions":["perm"],"tags":["first-instance","fabrications"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"19 people come to support the believers.\nMaterial evidence is being examined. Vladimir Poltoradnev asks the court to hear all audio recordings on discs, and not just its individual parts, since this way the understanding of the entire material is lost.\nDuring the examination of material evidence, it was revealed that the integrity of the packaging of the system units belonging to the defendants was violated. The believers intend to petition for the inadmissibility of these materials as evidence of their guilt, since they do not exclude falsifications.\nVladimir Poltoradnev declares that he does not own the literature presented, which was attached to the case file as material evidence of his guilt.\n","caseTitle":"The Case of Poltoradnev and Others in Solikamsk","date":"2023-06-15T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/solikamsk/index.html#20230615","regions":["perm"],"tags":["first-instance","fabrications"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"The state prosecutor reads out the case materials, including the protocols of interrogations of witnesses who did not appear in the courtroom.\nA prosecution witness who had previously attended worship services of Jehovah's Witnesses is being questioned. He reports that the religious group that existed in Solikamsk was never a structural unit of the LRO or the Administrative Center of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia. The witness also says that the LRO existed only for administrative and economic needs, for example, to rent premises for worship.\nAudio recordings of telephone conversations of the defendants are reproduced in court. Alexander Sobyanin declares that the voice attributed to him does not really belong to him.\nFurther, many positive characteristics of the defendants from their employers, colleagues, neighbors and relatives are announced.\n","caseTitle":"The Case of Poltoradnev and Others in Solikamsk","date":"2023-06-08T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/solikamsk/index.html#20230608","regions":["perm"],"tags":["first-instance","fabrications","interrogation"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"One of the prosecution witnesses states that, on the instructions of the FSB, he introduced the informant Martyn to believers. According to him, he did this because of threats from an employee of the service Ogienko A.A. to his wife. The witness states that the record of the interrogation does not contain the testimony that he gave to the investigator.\n","caseTitle":"The Case of Valeriy Rabota in Knyaze-Volkonskoye","date":"2023-05-22T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/knyaze-volkonskoe/index.html#20230522","regions":["khabarovsk"],"tags":["first-instance","interrogation","fabrications"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"Law enforcement officers conduct searches in the homes of Kishta Tutinova, Tsagan Khalgaeva and Ekaterina Menkova. The latter becomes ill. FSB officers call an ambulance. Due to her poor health, the believer is not interrogated, but she is given a summons to appear before the investigator on another day.\nKishta Tutinova and Tsagan Khalgaeva are taken for interrogation. Tsagan indicates in the interrogation protocol that her words are distorted. A sample of her voice and handwriting is taken from her.\nAfter interrogation, Kishta Tutinova is taken to the temporary detention facility.\n","caseTitle":"The Case of Tutinova and Others in Elista","date":"2023-02-28T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/elista/index.html#20230228","regions":["kalmykia"],"tags":["search","interrogation","fabrications","ivs","elderly"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"On January 31, 2023, the Kamchatka Territorial Court for the third time considered the case of the Bazhenovs, a married couple, and pensioner Vera Zolotova, who were previously acquitted, and found them guilty of extremism, imposing a suspended sentence of two years.\nAll three are residents of Yelizovo, a town in Kamchatka with a population of just over 36,000. The Bazhenovs are a friendly and social couple who are teachers with a close-knit family. Vera Zolotova is a 77-year-old pensioner, who has lived in her hometown all her life and has earned a reputation as a law-abiding person. Each of them has been practicing the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses for more than fifteen years. Like other representatives of this religion, who live in hundreds of other countries, they went to meetings with other believers, read and discussed the Bible, and sang religious songs. It was this activity, and not any actual crimes, that became the reason for their criminal prosecution, which has been going on for more than four years.\nDuring this time, the case of these believers has been at many stages: at first it was returned to the prosecutor's office due to shortcomings on the part of the prosecution; later it reached a verdict—the court found the believers guilty and gave them two-year suspended sentences. The appellate court recognized the verdict as fair, but the subsequent cassation court overturned it and sent the case back to the stage of appeal. In January 2022, the Kamchatka Territorial Court acquitted the believers. The Court of Cassation upheld this decision, but the prosecutor's office appealed to the Supreme Court of Russia, which overturned the acquittal on December 2022 and sent the case back to the appeal stage.\nSnezhana Bazhenova, recalling years of litigation, noted: “In court, it became clear that the charges against us were fabricated. For example, when the testimony of an elderly woman, a witness for the prosecution [who had discussed the Bible with Jehovah's Witnesses], was read out, she could not help but shout out the whole time: 'You've misinterpreted everything! That's a lie!' And the judge saw and heard that the prosecution's witness never really said that. Moreover, when asked if she knew us, she said: “No, I don’t know them at all.” Snezhana assessed her unjust persecution as follows: “This is the usual course of a Christian; many Christians before me have endured it with dignity.”\nReflecting on the possibility of ending up in a penal colony, Konstantin Bazhenov said that it would cause serious hardship for his family but added: \"We are among our dear friends, and my family will definitely be taken care of.\"\nThe believers still consider themselves innocent. It should be noted that according to the clarifications of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of Russia, the religious activity of Jehovah's Witnesses in itself does not constitute corpus delicti. In June 2022, the European Court of Human Rights fully acquitted Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia, pointing to \"indications of a policy of intolerance by the Russian authorities . . . designed to cause Jehovah's Witnesses to abandon their faith and to prevent others from joining it\" (§ 254).\n","category":"verdict","date":"2023-01-31T16:03:00+02:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2023/01/311602/image_hu_bce6a61e9de9168a.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2023/01/311602/image_hu_2ef67f73454383f.jpg","webp":"/news/2023/01/311602/image_hu_f8ffc1d21dba82bf.webp","webp2x":"/news/2023/01/311602/image_hu_5d1212928051577b.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2023/01/311602.html","regions":["kamchatka"],"subtitle":"As a Result of the Third Appeal, Believers From Kamchatka Were Found Guilty of Extremism","tags":["appeal","suspended","elderly","2-appeal","282.2-2","fabrications"],"title":"A Suspended Sentence Instead of an Acquittal.","type":"news"},{"body":"In January 2023, in the Saratov region, FSB officers raided the homes of five of Jehovah's Witnesses—four women aged 39 to 69 and a 64-year-old man.\nThe first search took place on January 3, and it was directed by Major Matrosov. Lieutenant Ponomaryov also participated in it; the resident of the home recognized him as the one who had conducted surveillance on her since November of the previous year. The security forces confiscated the Synodal translation of the Bible from the family. They also asked about school history notebooks belonging to the believers' daughter. Security forces were especially interested in written notes about the Israelites leaving Egypt and about the execution of Christ.\nOn January 20, four more searches took place. During one of them, the owner of the apartment was escorted home from the clinic. Nothing was seized from her home as a result of the investigative measures.\nDuring the search of the home of a married couple who are believers, the following was seized: a tablet, a 25-year anniversary card, a Bible, and a notebook containing the addresses of relatives.\nLaw enforcement officers came to another woman's home in search of her son. They did not seize anything, but they explained that she would be a witness in this case. The search was led by investigator Aleksandr Prydatko, who had previously initiated a criminal case against five of Jehovah's Witnesses from Balakovo. At the moment, the men are prohibited from certain activities.\nThe city of Balakovo is notorious for attempts to fabricate criminal cases against Jehovah's Witnesses. Back in 2015, believers captured video evidence of banned literature being planted in the building where worship services were held.\nIn June 2022, the European Court reiterated that Article 9 of the European Convention \"protects the right of believers to meet peacefully in order to worship in the manner prescribed by their religion\". (§·267)\n","category":"siloviki","date":"2023-01-20T00:00:00Z","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/common/search2_hu_49779cebc96c1159.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/common/search2_hu_620778508a59ad7b.jpg","webp":"/news/common/search2_hu_8fce651d990480ef.webp","webp2x":"/news/common/search2_hu_1d18a4e1b43d8ff3.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2023/02/080852.html","regions":["saratov"],"subtitle":"Previously, Security Forces Planted Banned Publications in Order to Incriminate Local Believer","tags":["elderly","search","fabrications","prohibition-of-actions"],"title":"In the City of Balakovo, New Searches Were Carried Out at the Homes of Jehovah's Witnesses.","type":"news"},{"body":"The meeting begins with the interrogation of investigator Y. V. Prannichuk. Her lawyer asks her questions about the indictment. It turns out that violations were committed during the investigation. For example, the lawyer's petition to terminate the criminal case was not attached to the case file. When asked how Prannichuk determined that Yakovlev was a member of the LRO, she replies: \"He used the means of conspiracy and continued to preach.\" Answering some questions, the investigator is confused, cannot answer and often asks to repeat the question.\nYuri Yakovlev asks the investigator why he was not shown the things that were seized from him. Investigator Prannichuk replies that there are witnesses for this. To which Yakovlev notes that the witnesses stood at the door and could not see everything that was happening: \"They could throw me something that I did not have. That's why I refused to sign the protocol.\"\n","caseTitle":"The Case of Yakovlev in Sosnovoborsk","date":"2023-01-13T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/sosnovoborsk/index.html#20230113","regions":["krasnoyarsk"],"tags":["first-instance","interrogation","fabrications"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"On December 1, 2022, Tatyana Fedeneva, judge of the Armyansk City Court of the Republic of Crimea, found Aleksandr Litvinyuk and Aleksandr Dubovenko guilty of extremism and sentenced them to 6 years in a penal colony— exactly what the prosecutor requested for them. The believers were taken into custody in the courtroom.\nAleksandr Litvinyuk, 62, is a pensioner, he worked for many years at state enterprises and factories and raised three children. Aleksandr Dubovenko, 49, worked for a long time as a welder, then as an electrician. In August 2021, searches were carried out in their homes. The men were detained and kept under house arrest for more than a year.\nThe investigation was conducted by Vitaly Vlasov, an FSB investigator, for 7 months, after which the case was submitted to the Armyansk City Court of the Republic of Crimea. The court hearings lasted six months. At one of the hearings, a witness, a seriously ill elderly woman, refuted the testimony recorded on her behalf by the investigator, and also said that she did not know the defendant Dubovenko and did not attend meetings for worship with him.\nGiving his final statement in court, Aleksandr Dubovenko emphasized: \"All our activity, mistakenly interpreted as criminal, was in fact nothing more than us exercising our constitutional right to freedom of conscience and religion.\" Aleksandr Litvinyuk noted in his final statement: “We would never be Jehovah's Witnesses if we incited hatred and religious intolerance or undermined the constitutional order, as is recorded in our criminal case. The same criminal case states that there were no victims.”\nAlexandr Dubovenko in the courtroom The verdict has not entered into force and can be appealed. Believers insist on their complete innocence. In addition to Dubovenko and Litvinyuk, 17 other Crimeans are being prosecuted for their peaceful religious beliefs. Four believers from Crimea are serving sentences for their faith in colonies, and in early October, a court in Sevastopol sent three more to jail.\nIn a ruling dated July 7, 2022, the European Court of Human Rights criticized the actions of the Russian authorities against believers and stated that “criminal prosecution and criminal liability for the peaceful practice of the religion of Jehovah’s Witnesses, together with others, was based on an unacceptably broad formulation and arbitrary application anti-extremism legislation” (§272).\n","category":"verdict","date":"2022-12-01T18:08:58+02:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2022/12/021730/image_hu_468a1f1dd1088aae.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2022/12/021730/image_hu_ee1fa7bab9496f31.jpg","webp":"/news/2022/12/021730/image_hu_6a23d9fad7ef2918.webp","webp2x":"/news/2022/12/021730/image_hu_6635c250f3aa3c4c.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2022/12/021730.html","regions":["crimea"],"subtitle":"The Court Considered Reading and Discussing the Bible Extremism ","tags":["282.2-1","liberty-deprivation","sentence","fabrications"],"title":"In Armyansk Two Believers Were Sentenced to Six Years in Prison.","type":"news"},{"body":"On November 7, 2022, Nikolay Razdrogin, judge of the Nikolskiy District Court of the Penza Region, sentenced one of Jehovah's Witnesses, 32-year-old Viktor Shayapov, to 2 years' suspended sentence with 8 months' probation. The believer received such punishment for peacefully practicing his religion.\nViktor became a defendant in a criminal case for his faith in October 2020. At that time, a wave of searches took place in Nikolsk at the homes of local Jehovah's Witnesses, including the home of the Shayapov family. In February 2022, Shayapov was detained in the Moscow Region, taken to Penza and placed under house arrest. He spent almost 9 months in isolation from society with a location-tracking device on his leg. The believer was also added to the list of the Federal Financial Monitoring Service of the Russian Federation.\nShayapov was accused of participating in the activity of an extremist organization (Part 2 of Art. 282.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). For almost a year and a half, the investigation was carried out by the Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Penza Region. In March 2022, the case went to court. During the 7 months' hearing, the participants of the proceedings examinded at least 15 volumes of case materials.\nThere were no facts of any extremist actions or appeals presented in them, and the testimonies of witnesses in court differed from the preliminary statements. Nevertheless, the prosecutor demanded that the believer was given a 4 year suspended sentence.\n“Let me ask a question which was neither answered by the investigator nor the prosecution”, Viktor Shayapov addressed the court in his final statement, “how could I apply Article 28 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation—exercise my right to profess religion individually and jointly with others—and at the same time not be prosecuted? I simply profess religious views that are not prohibited by law.” The believer insists on his complete innocence. The verdict can be appealed.\nThe courts of Penza Region had previously convicted eight more Jehovah's Witnesses for their faith, including women over 60 years of age.\nRussian and foreign human rights institutions have repeatedly drawn the attention of the Russian authorities to the fact that the criminal prosecution of Jehovah's Witnesses is unlawful. The authorities continue to ignore such statements, and as a result, the number of peaceful believers labeled as extremists is on the rise.\n","category":"verdict","date":"2022-11-07T16:47:32+02:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2022/11/081647/image_hu_3ae114069eb6f24d.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2022/11/081647/image_hu_6eef97731b273e20.jpg","webp":"/news/2022/11/081647/image_hu_5d0fc45661359e57.webp","webp2x":"/news/2022/11/081647/image_hu_bcbdcc30793c2580.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2022/11/081647.html","regions":["penza"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["282.2-2","sentence","suspended","fabrications"],"title":"A Court in Penza Region Sentenced Viktor Shayapov to Two Years Suspended Sentence for Believing in Jehovah God","type":"news"},{"body":"During the interrogation of the defendant's neighbor, it turns out that the protocol of his preliminary testimony was falsified. The witness says that he does not know Aleksey Ukhov personally, but only met him several times at the entrance of the house. I have not heard anything about religion from him and I do not know his wife. The prosecutor requests that the preliminary testimony of the witness be read out because of significant discrepancies. When interrogated by the investigator, he said that he knew Ukhov's wife, and Ukhov himself, in his opinion, was the leader of some religion. The witness claims that he did not give such testimony, and signed the interrogation protocol without checking.\nThe lawyer files a motion to recognize the examination of this witness as inadmissible evidence. Judge Victoria Anokhina postpones the decision of this petition until the verdict is passed.\n","caseTitle":"The Case of Ukhov in Sovetskaya Gavan","date":"2022-10-17T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/sovetskaya_gavan/index.html#20221017","regions":["khabarovsk"],"tags":["first-instance","fabrications"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"On May 30, 2022, the judge of the Moscow District Court of Nizhny Novgorod, Azamat Ionov, sentenced Maksim Zavrazhnov to 6 years suspended.\nThe verdict has not entered into force and can be appealed. The believer pleaded not guilty. There are no victims in the case, but the prosecutor asked the court to sentence the defendant to 5 years in a colony.\nIn July 2019, a massive special operation against peaceful believers took place in Nizhny Novgorod and its environs. Dozens were detained and interrogated, including Maksim Zavrazhnov. A criminal case was opened against him. For six months, the believer was under a ban on certain actions, and for 764 days - under a written undertaking not to leave. The investigation, which was conducted by the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Nizhny Novgorod Region, lasted more than two years. On October 25, 2021, the case was submitted to the Moscow District Court of Nizhny Novgorod.\nIn court, several witnesses for the prosecution testified that their testimony had been falsified. According to one of them, the protocols contained untrue information that was added by an operational officer, and she was forced to sign the amended documents.\nIn his last speech, Maksim Zavrazhnov asked the court to recognize the accusation as unfounded: “The prosecution side misinterpreted my religious activities, and I, a person who refuses to take up arms and treats people as equals, is accused of extremism! This is a serious error that needs to be corrected.\"\nIn his youth, Maksim already faced discrimination for his faith when he asked to replace his military service with an alternative civilian one. He became the object of harassment by the local media. The believer nevertheless managed to obtain permission for the ACS, but later he was given a suspended sentence for asking to be transferred to another place due to unbearable conditions of service. Subsequently, he said: \"This did not frighten me, since the most important thing for me was to remain with a clear conscience before God and before the law.\"\nIn the Nizhny Novgorod region, 9 criminal cases have already been initiated against 16 Jehovah's Witnesses. Four of them were sentenced to probation for their convictions\nPeaceful meetings of Jehovah's Witnesses are inappropriately interpreted by security officials throughout Russia as a continuation of the activities of liquidated religious organizations. \"This cannot but cause concern, since criminal prosecutions and arrests have become systemic,\" said the Human Rights Council under the President of Russia.\n","category":"verdict","date":"2022-05-30T16:09:04+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2022/05/301609/image_hu_61605baadb62e312.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2022/05/301609/image_hu_3e1885097609b727.jpg","webp":"/news/2022/05/301609/image_hu_3e6c1fd703f43457.webp","webp2x":"/news/2022/05/301609/image_hu_a63bab2898bc897e.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2022/05/301609.html","regions":["nizhegorod"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["282.2-1","sentence","suspended","fabrications","asc"],"title":"Maksim Zavrazhnov, a Nizhny Novgorod Resident, Received a Six-Year Suspended Sentence for Participating in a Peaceful Religious Meeting of Jehovah's Witnesses","type":"news"},{"body":"On March 18, 2022, the Volgograd Regional Court upheld the conviction of Valeriy Rogozin, Igor Egozaryan, Denis Peresunko and Sergey Melnik. They will get jailed for their faith in Jehovah God.\nIn September 2021, the court of first instance sentenced Rogozin to 6 years and 5 months in a penal colony, Peresunko to 6 years and 3 months, and Melnik and Egozaryan to 6 years in a penal colony. The verdict has entered into force, but believers can appeal it in cassation.\nWhen the criminal prosecution began, the wife of Denis Peresunko died of COVID-19, and the believer himself was placed in a pre-trial detention center for 5 months. He is on disability and the resulting stress has exacerbated his condition. A long stay in the pre-trial detention center also seriously undermined the health of Valeriy Rogozin. Egozaryan and Melnik are raising their underage sons.\nIn 2019, law enforcement officers arrested four believers and accused them of organizing extremist activities, and later two of them — Peresunko and Rogozin — also of financing it. At the same time, recordings of religious meetings of Volgograd Jehovah's Witnesses, at which they discuss Bibles, sing songs and pray to God, were used as material evidence of their “guilt.”\nIn court, the prosecution interrogated classified witnesses. One of them kept a covert record of worship and stated that the unlawful activities of the defendants consisted in the fact that they \"obey God.\" Another secret witness said that he had never heard threats, calls for violence or the overthrowing of power from the defendants. Some witnesses openly stated that their testimony had been falsified by the investigator.\nThe scheme, according to which Volgograd residents were convicted, is used by law enforcement agencies throughout Russia against peaceful believers. As in the Rogozin case, the indictments mention “propaganda of the cult of religious superiority of the teachings of Jehovah’s Witnesses” as evidence of extremism. However, human rights activists in Russia and abroad consider this approach to be erroneous and unconstitutional. In particular, back in 2017, Lyudmila Alekseyeva, a member of the Presidential Council of the Russian Federation for the development of civil society and human rights, noted with concern: “What believer does not consider his faith to be true? Jehovah's Witnesses is a church that has branches in many countries. They everywhere freely profess their faith and nowhere are they considered extremists. And we have Jehovah's Witnesses, as sincerely believing people, very exemplary citizens: hard-working, honestly treating their families, their children.”\n","category":"verdict","date":"2022-03-18T00:00:00Z","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2022/03/210919/image_hu_6d28dbf2de06dac.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2022/03/210919/image_hu_db91ef1e7ce556ab.jpg","webp":"/news/2022/03/210919/image_hu_e5116b508ffc0d2d.webp","webp2x":"/news/2022/03/210919/image_hu_37f94eaf12c37cfe.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2022/03/210919.html","regions":["volgograd"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["appeal","liberty-deprivation","282.2-1","282.3-1","disability","minors","health-risk","fabrications","secret-witness","hidden-surveillance","elderly"],"title":"An Appeal in Volgograd Upholds the Sentence of Four Jehovah's Witnesses","type":"news"},{"body":"On February 7, 2022 Novosibirsk Regional Court upheld the sentence of Leninsky District Court of Novosibirsk against Yuriy Saveliyev — 6 years in a general regime colony and 1 year of restricted freedom for believing in God.\nAs an additional punishment, the court deprived the believer of the right to engage in activities related to administration and participation in public and religious organizations for a period of three years.\nSaveliyev called the charges against him trumped up and called himself a victim. He stated: \"I lost my health, I lost my property, my reputation suffered, and now I bear the shameful mark of a 'criminal\". He can appeal the verdict in cassation and international structures.\nAn appellate court in a different composition reconsidered the verdict to the believer after the Eighth Court of Cassation of General jurisdiction returned the case to the appellate stage on November 24, 2021.\nAfter his arrest, Yuriy Saveliyev has been behind bars for more than three years. In the colony, where the believer was sent after his conviction, there were attempts to force him to undergo treatment without grounds — in the summer of 2021 Yuriy was sent to Barnaul to a medical correctional facility specializing in the treatment of prisoners with alcoholism and drug addiction, although he does not suffer from either of these diseases. Saveliyev was repeatedly forced to sign a consent to medical procedures. In Correctional Colony No. 1 in the Altai Territory, photos of Yuriy with the caption \"prone to extremism\" were hung above his bed. The elderly believer should be released in August 2023.\nThe criminal prosecution of Russian Jehovah's Witnesses was condemned by the Council of Europe, the OSCE, the European Union and many other Russian and international organizations. The new clarifications of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of Russia dated June 28, 2011 state that communal worship in itself does not constitute a crime under Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, which the security forces use as justification for the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses.\n","category":"verdict","date":"2022-02-07T00:00:00Z","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2022/02/091403/image_hu_30c1736386b05588.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2022/02/091403/image_hu_41681369a5732fcb.jpg","webp":"/news/2022/02/091403/image_hu_fe45ec6533df82d0.webp","webp2x":"/news/2022/02/091403/image_hu_8bf6a2d13456f6ae.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2022/02/091403.html","regions":["novosibirsk"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["2-appeal","liberty-deprivation","282.2-1","fabrications","elderly"],"title":"A Secondary Appeal in Novosibirsk Upheld an Imprisonment Term for 68-Year-Old Yuriy Saveliyev","type":"news"},{"body":"On December 6, 2021 the Rostov Regional Court examined the appeal of 69-year-old Vilen Avanessov and his son, Arsen, as well as 54-year-old Aleksandr Parkov. They are all residents of Rostov-on-Don. The panel of judges headed by Gennadiy Peschanov left the sentence of the first instance unchanged: Parkov and Arsen Avanesov were sentenced to 6.5 years of real imprisonment and Vilen Avanesov - to 6.\nThe verdict came into force. The men insist on their complete innocence. They have the right to appeal the decision in cassation and international instances.\nIn July 2021, the prosecutor requested 7 to 7.5 years in a general regime penal colony for the believers. Vladimir Khudaverdyan, a judge of the Leninskiy District Court, found the law-abiding citizens to be extremists, but slightly commuted the sentence. The believers have de-jure served more than half of their sentence, as they were in the pre-trial detention center for 2.5 years while the investigation and the trial were going on.\nIn the late 1980s, the Avanessovs were forced to flee to Russia because of the war in Nagorno-Karabakh. However, there they suffered repressions because of their faith.\nArsen is worried about his retired parents who have poor state of health. In addition, his mother was left alone without proper support. The investigating authorities did not allow her to see either her husband or her son for more than a year. Aleksandr Parkov had immune system problems. His wife Galina, who in January 2021, was also found guilty under the \"extremist\" article, is very worried about her husband's health: \"The conditions in the detention center are not good, he often had stomach aches.\"\nOn May 22, 2019, officials of the Investigative Committee of Russia conducted mass searches in the homes of Rostov residents suspected of practicing the faith of Jehovah's Witnesses. On the same day, a criminal case was opened against Parkov, as well as father and son Avanesov for their religious beliefs alone. Immediately after the searches, the men were taken into pre-trial detention.\nThe charges against the believers were based on numerous falsifications. For example, at one hearing the court questioned a secret witness who had been instructed by the FSB to provoke Jehovah's Witnesses to criticize various denominations and the state. Two other witnesses claimed that their testimony was distorted. According to one of them, during the interrogation a whole paragraph of someone else's statements was attributed to her.\nThe believers repeatedly drew the court's attention to the fact that the religious meetings of Jehovah's Witnesses are not extremist activities, but a peaceful manifestation of faith. They also emphasized the peacefulness of their beliefs. \"In their relations both with the authorities and with other people, Jehovah's Witnesses try to be correct, not to respond to rudeness, but to take the example of the first Christians and Jesus Christ,\" said Arsen Avanesov at one of the court hearings.\nEarlier, convictions of six other Jehovah's Witnesses were confirmed in Rostov-on-Don because of their belief in God. They all received two to four years of suspended sentences.\nThe Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation on 28 October, 2021, brought attention to the inadmissibility of prosecuting Jehovah's Witnesses for their participation in peaceful meetings. According to its ruling, worship of Jehovah's Witnesses and their joint rites and ceremonies do not by themselves constitute a crime under the Article 282.2 of the RF Criminal Code, despite the liquidation and prohibition of their legal entities.\n","category":"verdict","date":"2021-12-06T00:00:00Z","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2021/12/071458/image_hu_8dd9f3abf4d10f5b.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2021/12/071458/image_hu_daa4bcae0d7e2798.jpg","webp":"/news/2021/12/071458/image_hu_41dc7de5f54533a2.webp","webp2x":"/news/2021/12/071458/image_hu_4bb656357f5e3180.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2021/12/071458.html","regions":["rostov"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["appeal","liberty-deprivation","families","elderly","fabrications","secret-witness"],"title":"Rostov Regional Court Approved Six to Six and Half Years in Prison for Three of Jehovah's Witnesses. They Have Already Served Half of Their Sentence in Pre-Trial Detention","type":"news"},{"body":"During the preliminary hearing, several defendants and their defenders fall ill, two of them confirmed to have covid. However, the sick agree that the hearings begin in their absence. Defendants and defence counsel shall provide the court with information on violations committed during the investigation: beating out testimony under torture with the requirement to include untrue information in the record; unlawful involuntary placement of the accused in a psychiatric hospital; introduction of lawyers into the case in violation of the requirements of lawyer ethics; the use of incompetent and biased experts; violations of the right of the accused to a defence; falsification of evidence in the selection of preventive measures. The defense asks that the evidence be declared inadmissible and that the case be returned to the prosecutor.\n","caseTitle":"The Case of Loginov and Others in Surgut","date":"2021-11-12T11:43:09+02:00","permalink":"/en/cases/surgut/index.html#20211112","regions":["khanty-mansi"],"tags":["first-instance","torture","forced-hospitalization","fabrications"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"Witnesses are being questioned. When the written testimony of one woman is announced, falsification is revealed. According to the witness, only two sheets of the signature were made by her hand, and the rest were forged. In this regard, the woman refuses to testify at the preliminary investigation.\n","caseTitle":"The Case of Grinenko and Others in Lesozavodsk","date":"2021-10-25T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/lesozavodsk/index.html#20211025","regions":["primorye"],"tags":["first-instance","interrogation","fabrications"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"On September 23, 2021, the Traktorozavodsky district court of Volgograd sentenced Valeriy Rogozin, Igor Yegozaryan, Sergey Melnik, and Denis Peresunko to long prison terms for praying and discussing the Bible with fellow believers. They were taken into custody and will be kept in pre-trial detention until the sentence comes into force.\nOnly the defendants and one family member each were allowed into the courtroom. Their numerous friends who were waiting outside saw a paddy wagon and a convoy with dogs approaching the court building and it was clear that the sentence would involve actual imprisonment. So during the lunch break, the defendants said goodbye to their relatives and friends.\nJudge Iryna Struk sentenced Valeriy Rogozin to 6 years and 5 months in a penal colony, Denis Peresunko to 6 years and 3 months in a penal colony, Sergey Melnik to 6 years in a penal colony, and Igor Yegorzaryan to 6 years in a penal colony. Earlier, assistant prosecutor Anna Myagkova asked for 9 years in a penal colony for Rogozin and Peresunko, and 7 years for Igor Yegorzaryan and Sergey Melnik.\nWhile the investigation was going on, Valeriy Rogozin, Sergey Melnik, and Igor Egozaryan have already spent more than 7 months behind bars. This seriously undermined Rogozin\u0026#39;s health, and he had to undergo prolonged treatment. Denis Peresunko was in pre-trial detention for more than 5 months. At the same time, there are no victims in the case. The believers insist on their complete innocence.\nValeriy Rogozin, 59, is a former military pilot, who served in the army for 12 years. For many years he worked as a design engineer. Together with his wife, they raised two sons. Igor Yegozaryan, a 56-year-old construction electrician, is raising an underage son. Sergey Melnik, 49, a slinger and roofer by profession, helps his wife take care of their sick relatives. The spouses are raising three sons together, one of whom is underage. Denis Peresunko, 43, is on disability. The stress of his wife\u0026#39;s death and criminal prosecution have aggravated his condition.\nOn November 22, 2019, the charges against the believers were toughened—now the investigation considered them not participants, but organizers of an extremist community. Two of them, Rogozin and Peresunko, were also charged under Part 1 of Article 282.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (financing of an extremist organization). These articles carry penalties of up to 10 years in prison.\nThe case against Valeriy Rogozin and three other believers was initiated on May 13, 2019. It was investigated for about 8 months by the Investigative Committee of the Volgograd region. The case went to the Traktorozavodsky district court of Volgograd on January 9, 2020.\nTo prove the guilt of peaceful believers in court, the prosecution questioned classified witnesses. One of them secretly recorded the worship services and stated that the unlawful activity of the defendants was to \u0026quot;obey God. Another secret witness accused the believers of \u0026quot;spiritual terrorism,\u0026quot; although there is no such term. The witnesses were interrogated incognito because of the alleged danger to their lives and the health of declassifying their identities, but no confirmation of this was given. One undercover witness said he never heard the defendants threaten, call for violence, or overthrow the government.\nIn May 2020, the UN Human Rights Council\u0026#39;s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention ruled the criminal cases against 18 believers in Russia, including Valeriy Rogozin and Igor Yegozaryan, illegal.\nLawyers for the believers repeatedly alleged numerous violations during the preliminary investigation. Prosecution witnesses who appeared in court—mostly elderly—said that their testimony was falsified and their preliminary testimony contained words they had not said. One of them explicitly stated that the investigator had \u0026quot;made up and edited\u0026quot; her testimony. The defendants drew the court\u0026#39;s attention to the fact that the prosecution deliberately focuses on questioning elderly witnesses because it is easier to confuse them and get them to testify for the investigation.\nSpeaking in court with his last plea, Valeriy Rogozin emphasized: \u0026quot;Jehovah\u0026#39;s Witnesses are peaceful, politically neutral people. We do not participate in protest rallies, strikes, or support any of the conflicting parties. We do not participate in military conflicts. We learned from the Bible that only God can deal with all of humanity\u0026#39;s problems. Sergey Melnyk emphasized in his address to the court: \u0026quot;I have never done anything that goes against the laws of God. Moreover, I have tried to do good, to show love and justice, to take care of people. Denis Peresunko noted: \u0026quot;Jesus was tried and killed for bringing truth to people. I am being judged because I learned the truth that is in the Bible and discussed it with my friends. Igor Yegozarian said in his final remarks: \u0026quot;The whole world says that Jehovah\u0026#39;s Witnesses cannot be extremists, that they are pacifists, that they do not take up arms and never speak against the state, they do not interfere in politics. The whole history of Jehovah\u0026#39;s Witnesses is proof of that.\u0026quot;\n\u0026quot;Officially, the Russian authorities—President Vladimir Putin, the government, the Foreign Ministry—emphasize that it is not forbidden in the country to practice the religion of Jehovah\u0026#39;s Witnesses. But courts in the regions keep putting peaceful people behind bars for long terms,\u0026quot; says Yaroslav Sivulskiy commenting on the situation. \u0026quot;April 2021 marked the 70th anniversary of Operation \u0026#39;North\u0026#39;. when thousands of Jehovah\u0026#39;s Witnesses were \u0026#39;designated\u0026#39; as criminals and deported under very similar charges of harming the state and society. Decades later, these charges were found to be criminal, and the victims of the repression were rehabilitated and compensated by the state. Today, accusations of extremism against the Witnesses resound like clear echoes. Dozens of ongoing and past trials of believers prove that there is not a single instance of actual harm to the state and society. The law enforcement facilities view it as extremism that people continue to pray and discuss the Bible peacefully together, just as they did in Soviet times\u0026quot;.\nThe prosecution consistently confused the concepts of a religious assembly and a local religious organization (LRO). The defense emphasized that no one could be held criminally liable for participating in a worship service. The position of the prosecution, as in many other cases against Russian believers, is at odds with that of the Russian Supreme Court, which has not banned Jehovah\u0026#39;s Witnesses.\n","category":"verdict","date":"2021-09-23T00:00:00Z","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2021/09/240821/image_hu_2d95a16a538b8de6.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2021/09/240821/image.jpg","webp":"/news/2021/09/240821/image_hu_98ff256177469804.webp","webp2x":"/news/2021/09/240821/image_hu_66def27fcc9a37c8.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2021/09/240821.html","regions":["volgograd"],"subtitle":"Court in Volgograd Sentenced Four Jehovah's Witnesses","tags":["sizo","sentence","282.2-1","282.3-1","health-risk","fabrications"],"title":"From 6 years to 6 years and 5 months in prison for the faith.","type":"news"},{"body":"On March 11, 2021, the court of the Jewish Autonomous Region upheld the suspended sentence of 43-year-old Anastasia Sycheva from Obluchye. The verdict has entered into force. The believer insists on her innocence. She has the right to appeal the verdict in cassation, as well as in international instances.\nOn January 21, 2021, Olga Afanasyeva, judge of the Obluchensky District Court of the Jewish Autonomous Region, found Anastasiya Sycheva guilty of participating in a banned organization and sentenced her to 2 years of suspended imprisonment with a 2-year probationary period and 6 months of restriction of freedom. This is the kind of punishment the prosecutor requested.\nAt the hearing in the court of appeal, Anastasiya described the charge in the following words: “There is no logic. It is absent. After all, I'm not being judged for real crimes, but for my faith in God. But a good sense of humor helps out. Otherwise, you can get crazy if you take all this seriously.\"\nIn addition to criminal prosecution, Anastasiya had many life’s trials: in just one year, her older sister died of cancer, and later she lost her mother and brother. She has raised two nephews, and now she is caring for her sick father. She spent almost a year and a half under recognizance not to leave, which limited her free movement outside the region.\nIn total, 19 similar criminal cases were initiated in the administrative center of the Jewish Autonomous Region, Birobidzhan, against 23 believers who peacefully profess the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses. The accusation against Anastasia Sycheva and a number of believers from Birobidzhan is based on the testimony of the only witness for the prosecution - police officer Yulia Zvereva. However, in court, she stated that she did not know anything about the events in which Sycheva was accused. According to the defendant, in the minutes of the court sessions of the first instance, \"what did not actually happen and was not said was added.\"\nActions such as divine services, prayers and chants are not prohibited by the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. On the contrary, they are guaranteed by the Russian Constitution as fundamental human rights and freedoms. In February 2021, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated: “During the consideration of the case [in the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation], neither the legitimacy of the religious beliefs of Jehovah's Witnesses, nor the ways of expressing them, were assessed. […] Members of a liquidated organization can independently practice their religion, including as part of religious groups that do not require registration. \"\nDespite this, Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia continue to be sentenced to prison terms because of their faith. Russian and foreign human rights organizations unanimously condemn the persecution of believers in Russia. In January 2021, at a meeting with the Human Rights Council, President Putin re-ordered the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation to deal with violations of the legislation on freedom of conscience, religion and religious associations.\n","category":"verdict","date":"2021-03-12T09:09:00+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2021/03/6/image_hu_479d6aa608eadfab.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2021/03/6/image_hu_824b107e47b396aa.jpg","webp":"/news/2021/03/6/image_hu_d2314052e1d55a9e.webp","webp2x":"/news/2021/03/6/image_hu_8056ae6cdba047d0.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2021/03/6.html","regions":["jewish"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["suspended","appeal","fabrications","282.2-2"],"title":"Jewish Autonomous Region court upholds Anastasiya Sycheva's suspended sentence for participating in Jehovah's Witnesses worship services","type":"news"},{"body":"In response to Yuriy Zalipayev's appeal, Lieutenant Colonel of Justice I.Y. Vertyanov, Deputy Head of the Military Investigation Department for the Southern Military District (316th Military Investigation Department), reports that Svetikov's actions revealed signs of a crime under Part 1 of Article 286 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (abuse of office, if committed: a) with the use of violence or with the threat of its use; b) with the use of weapons or special means; c) with the infliction of grave consequences).\n","caseTitle":"Case of Zalipayev in Mayskiy","date":"2021-01-11T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/mayskiy/index.html#20210111","regions":["kabardino-balkar"],"tags":["fabrications"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"Four prosecution witnesses are questioned during the trial. The investigator denies that he exerted pressure on the witness during the interrogation. He confirms that he supervised the examination, according to which the believer allegedly gained access to a prohibited resource through third-party sites. At the request of the lawyer to demonstrate how this is possible, the investigator refuses. According to him, this procedure was carried out by specialists without his direct participation.\nYevgeniy Yakku's wife, Irina, is next to be interrogated. She notes that Jehovah's Witnesses do not refuse medical treatment or call for the overthrow of the constitutional order or the severing of family ties. When asked why they continued to meet after the liquidation of the LRO, Irina cites the example of graduates: even after school, they remain friends and sometimes get together. The witness notes that her husband did not organize official events, but helped to hold friendly meetings without forcing anyone to come to them. \"Even God didn't drag anyone by the hand into Noah's ark,\" adds Irina.\n","caseTitle":"Case of Yakku in Arkhangelsk","date":"2020-12-24T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/arkhangelsk2/index.html#20201224","regions":["arkhangelsk"],"tags":["first-instance","fabrications","interrogation"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"During the trial, the prosecution witness reports pressure from the investigator to fabricate testimony. At the next hearing, the investigator shall be summoned for questioning to clarify the circumstances.\n","caseTitle":"Case of Yakku in Arkhangelsk","date":"2020-12-17T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/arkhangelsk2/index.html#20201217","regions":["arkhangelsk"],"tags":["first-instance","fabrications"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"The Leninsky District Court is holding hearings on the merits behind closed doors. Prosecution witnesses are being questioned. Andrey and Ekaterina Okhrimchuk claim that the investigator distorted their testimony. Investigator Antipov is trying to prove that the Okhrimchuk spouses are active members of the LRO and that this is allegedly confirmed by their words during the investigation. Ekaterina claims that during the investigative interrogation, operative Chaikin attributed to her a whole paragraph of hearsay from other testimonies.\nThe specialist is a religious scholar from the Southern Federal University. According to him, the essence of religion is impossible without believers gathering together and performing their rites. The specialist notes that it is impossible to determine from the video recordings that they are an ordinary worship service or a meeting of the LRO.\n","caseTitle":"The Case of Avanesovs and Others in Rostov-on-Don","date":"2020-12-17T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/rostov-on-don7/index.html#20201217","regions":["rostov"],"tags":["first-instance","interrogation","fabrications"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"On October 23, 2020, the Oktyabrsky District Court of Kirov announced the verdict in the case of 61-year-old Anatoliy Tokarev, one of Jehovah's Witnesses. He was found guilty of organizing the activities of the banned organization and fined 500 thousand rubles. He pleaded not guilty and will appeal the court decision.\nThe verdict caught former software engineer Anatoly Tokarev and his family in the midst of an illness that they endure without hospitalization. Judge Sergei Skorobogaty did not postpone the announcement of the verdict.\nThe trial showed that there were no victims in the case and no one had ever heard anything similar to extremism from Anatoliy Tokarev and other believers, although he was charged under two articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation at once: organization (part 1 of article 282.2) and financing (part 1 of article 282.3) of an extremist organization. The whole essence of Tokarev's \"crimes\", uncovered by investigators of the Investigative Committee, boiled down to \"joint singing of biblical songs and the study of religious literature,\" as well as to covering the utility costs of an empty worship building. But even in order to bring these accusations, the investigators had to resort to falsifying the testimony of witnesses, which was revealed during their interrogation in court.\nNone of this deterred Judge Skorobogaty from convicting. A large fine imposed is a heavy punishment for a believer who lives on a pension and a janitor's salary. The verdict has not entered into force.\n","category":"verdict","date":"2020-10-23T16:14:00+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2020/10/12/image_hu_40370bb877864e8.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2020/10/12/image_hu_a5155ded796f022b.jpg","webp":"/news/2020/10/12/image_hu_43943558f46359f5.webp","webp2x":"/news/2020/10/12/image_hu_7261f05b080ab02a.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2020/10/12.html","regions":["kirov"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["fine","health-risk","fabrications"],"title":"A Kirov court finds Anatoliy Tokarev, a peaceful believer, guilty of extremism. He was fined 500 thousand rubles.","type":"news"},{"body":"On July 11, 2020, the 15-day arrest period of Dennis Christensen, who was sent to a punishment cell on fabricated charges, came to an end. He is in good spirits. His defense team plans to appeal his fine and hope to achieve commutation of the sanctions imposed on him.\n","category":"prison","date":"2020-07-11T19:48:00+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2020/07/8/image_hu_91249578bfc5553d.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2020/07/8/image.jpg","webp":"/news/2020/07/8/image_hu_41974f96ad4f16a.webp","webp2x":"/news/2020/07/8/image_hu_cd29af9ed228bd27.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2020/07/8.html","regions":["kursk","oryol"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["shizo","fabrications"],"title":"Dennis Christensen has been released from a special punishment block after being held there for 15 days. The defense team plans to appeal the punishment that he has received","type":"news"},{"body":"On July 9, 2020, the prosecutor demanded to sentence 34-year-old Yevgeny Spirin to 7 years of colony, baselessly considering religious conversations extremist. Yevgeny did not plead guilty. On July 14, the debate on the case will continue and he may make a final statement in court. At the same time Furmanovsky city court may pass a sentence.\nUpdate. On July 14, the defendant himself spoke in the debate. \u0026ldquo;I did not commit illegal acts, did not create illegal organizations and did not violate the law of the Russian Federation, and joint discussion of the Bible with friends is an inalienable right enshrined in the Constitution,\u0026rdquo; the believer said. He drew the court\u0026rsquo;s attention to the fact that the testimony of witnesses at the trial refutes the prosecutor\u0026rsquo;s accusatory position. (Yevgeniy\u0026rsquo;s final statement in court is scheduled for July 21; a date for the verdict has not yet been set, but the court may issue a verdict on the same day.) January 21, 2019, the FSB of Ivanovo region instituted criminal proceedings against Yevgeniy Spirin. Prior to that, special services had been monitoring the believers with the help of an embedded agent, a former police officer, who depicted interest in the Bible. Eugeniy is charged with resuming the activities of the banned religious organization of Jehovah's Witnesses, as he did not stop participating in religious meetings of believers.\nOn the first day of the debate in the Furmanov Town Court of Ivanovo region, the prosecutor spoke. He considered Yevgeny Spirin's guilt proved and requested 7 years in prison for him.\n\"I have never been neither an organizer nor a member of a banned religious organization. I simply profess the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses. My religious beliefs are based only on the Bible\", - said, in turn, during one of the previous court hearings Yevgeniy Spirin.\nThe prosecutor requested a prison sentence for the believer, despite obvious falsifications in the case. In particular, an expert confirmed the fabrication of the search report in Spirin's house, while his former neighbor during the interrogation in court reported that she hadn't given Yevgeni a negative characteristic, appearing in the case.\nThe second part of the debate is scheduled for 14 July 2020. On that day, the believer's defence will take the floor and Eugene Spirin may also make a final statement to the court. Judge Yuri Gnedin may then pronounce his verdict.\nYevgeniy Spirin was detained on January 27, 2019, when about 10 security officers in civilian clothes broke down the door in the apartment where he lives with his wife, Natalia. At that moment the believers had friends, including an 11-year-old child, an 82-year-old pensioner, and a 70-year-old woman with a disability. Several law enforcement officers pushed Yevgeniy into the kitchen and handcuffed him. Electronic devices, literature, and postcards were seized from those present. Law enforcers behaved rudely, called the crowd a \"sect\" and threatened to undergo a humiliating inspection.\nThe next day Larisa Zubova, judge of the Kastrychnitskaya district court of Ivanovo, sent Spirin to the pre-trial detention center, where Yevgeniy stayed for 5.5 months. He was under house arrest for another 5.5 months. December 18, 2019, the court ruled to release Spiryn from house arrest.\nAccording to a decision of the UN Human Rights Council Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, attached to Yevgeny Spirin's case, the activities of Jehovah's Witnesses have nothing to do with extremism.\n","category":"trial","date":"2020-07-09T17:04:00+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2020/07/7/image_hu_a064d4b13b56aa46.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2020/07/7/image.jpg","webp":"/news/2020/07/7/image_hu_39d48743281bc354.webp","webp2x":"/news/2020/07/7/image_hu_a64dd34ab189c6e1.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2020/07/7.html","regions":["ivanovo"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["prosecutor-request","liberty-deprivation","fabrications"],"title":"The prosecutor's request includes seven years of corrective penal colony for Yevgeniy Spirin of the City of Furmanov, despite an obvious fabrication of charges","type":"news"},{"body":"On July 6, 2020, when Dennis Christensen was about to leave his cell for alleged protocol violations, the prison authorities extended his detention for another 5 days. The reason for this was another ungrounded accusation of violations - a late rise from sleep and unauthorized communication with prisoners.\nDennis Christensen, a Danish citizen and resident of Oryol, sentenced to 6 years in prison, was illegally placed in a punishment cell on June 26, 2020, three days after the decision of the Lgov district court of Kursk Region on his early release in exchange for a fine. The formal reason for this was two reports that he was in the dining room for a meal at the wrong time and that he also did not wear a prison jacket over his T-shirt.\nEarlier it was reported that Christensen was sent to a single cell type facility (EPKT), a special isolation facility for persistent violators of the prison regime. However, this information was not confirmed. Christensen himself told his lawyer that he was brought to the EPKT building and was given clothes with patches of this special isolator. However, he was not told where he was. Later it turned out that Christensen wasn't placed in the EPKT, but in a punishment cell (SHIZO) located in the same building.\nIn order to prolong Christensen's detention in the isolation ward, the colony's administration once again resorted to fabrication. According to the new reports, the believer violated the wake-up time and also carried out \"inter-cell communication\". In an interview with his lawyer, Dennis called the charges ungrounded.\nBefore the decision to prolong Dennis Christensen's detention at the SHIZO, the reports of violations were discussed by a special prison commission, during which the believer was not provided with an interpreter, depriving him of the right to sufficiently understand what was happening. The commission also failed to conduct a medical examination of Christensen, which, due to his illness, it was obliged to do both before being admitted to the SHIZO and before extending his sentence.\n\"Already after the decision to extend the stay at the SHIZO a doctor came to Dennis. Christensen told him about all of his complaints, especially the fact that he has difficulties breathing and his neurological diseases became more intense. The doctor replied: \"It's not fatal, your pulse is good.\" This was related by one of the lawyers of the believer after talking to his client.\nAs the defense lawyer explains, the violations against Christensen are fabricated in order to gather \"support evidence\" for the appeal the court decision on mitigation of punishment to the believer, has no real facts that would prevent Dennis from going free. Back in June 2019, after serving half of his prison sentence, Christensen was eligible for early release.\n","category":"prison","date":"2020-07-09T08:05:00+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2020/07/6/image_hu_7f68aeab33e21e7f.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2020/07/6/image_hu_a929ddef91709745.jpg","webp":"/news/2020/07/6/image_hu_65e9eba01236fc8e.webp","webp2x":"/news/2020/07/6/image_hu_b0eb5a281cae42d3.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2020/07/6.html","regions":["oryol","kursk"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["shizo","fabrications"],"title":"Danish citizen Dennis Christensen will remain in the penal detention center for an additional 5 days. The center's management has, once again, fabricated baseless violations of prison protocol","type":"news"},{"body":"On June 26, 2020, the Lgov prison authorities illegally placed Dennis Christensen in a cell of a special punishment block (EPKT), typically used for malicious offenders. Given that his health has deteriorated, the move seems to be a calculated attempt to break him. At the same time, the prosecutor's office appealed the mitigation of his sentence, which they had originally supported in court. What happened?\nWhat did the prosecutor's office do?\nDe jure, Dennis Christensen has already spent more than 4 out of 6 years in prison for his faith. Already one year ago, he was eligible for parole or another mitigation of his sentence. On the 4th attempt, his petition went to court, and on June 23, 2020, the Lgov District Court ordered the replacement of the remaining part of the sentence with a fine of 400,000 rubles. Artem Kofanov, Deputy Prosecutor of the Kursk Prosecutor's Office for the Supervision of Correctional Institutions, who took part in the trial, supported the mitigation of the punishment. But two days later, on June 25, Aleksey Shatunov, the prosecutor of the same prosecutor's office, stated that the court ruling was illegal and demanded to cancel it and sent the material for a new trial to the same court. What made the prosecutor's office change its position is unknown.\nWhy did Prosecutor Shatunov consider the decision to have been illegal? In his presentation, he referred to the administration of the Lgov prison, which, according to him, characterized the prisoner unsatisfactorily: \"Due to the lack of positive activity in his work and public life of the correctional facility.\"\nShatunov's arguments were already considered invalid by the Lgov district court when they were voiced by the prison representatives during the trial on mitigation of the punishment. The defense submitted to the court expert reports confirming that Christensen has physical conditions that exclude him from physical labor: industrial work in the prison and participation in other types of labor. In turn, the representative of the penitentiary was forced to admit that the prison could not provide him with the type of work that would be in accord with his physical limitations. The court attached medical documents to the case and apparently relied on them in making its decision.\nWhat did the prison do?\nAt the same time as the unexpected actions of the prosecutor's office, events were developing in the Lgov prison: on June 25, two reports against Christensen were made at the same time. The first one — for the fact that he was in the food room at a wrong time, and the second — for the fact that he was in the barracks in a T-shirt, without a jacket. This was enough to have him sent to the EPKT for 10 days. In penal colonies, this is the strictest of measures for particularly vicious violators of prison order.\nAccording to the law, such measure is taken only in a case of repeated, serious violations by the prisoner and only after a medical examination for the absence of diseases that prevent the detention in the EPKT. Neither of these measures happened with Christensen.\n\"The colony administration chose a strange excuse to put Christensen in the EPKT as a particularly dangerous offender. The list of gross violations is given in Article 116 of the Penal Enforcement Code, and there is nothing in it that Christensen did. According to the administration of the colony, it turns out that being in a shirt in the barracks is the same as rioting or taking drugs,\" says Yaroslav Savulskiy, representative of the European Association of Jehovah's Witnesses.\nThe believer and another prisoner are in a cell measuring 3.3 meters by 2.3 meters. The room is poorly ventilated and there is mold, which threatens the health of Christensen, who suffered pneumonia a few months ago. \"Dennis has been diagnosed with a serious spinal cord condition. The administration of the colony is aware of this, but placed him in conditions where he has to sleep on a hard bed, experiencing excruciating pain,\" said the lawyer of the believer.\nChristensen himself told the lawyer that at the time of his alleged violations in similar circumstances, there were other prisoners with him, but he alone was sent to the EPKT. \"This leads to the idea that there is a planned action, which is necessary to prevent Dennis from being released by court order,\" said the lawyer.\n","category":"prison","date":"2020-07-02T10:36:00+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2020/07/2/image_hu_e6f3f8ca3ebdc8ee.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2020/07/2/image_hu_f828c4ff801a21fd.jpg","webp":"/news/2020/07/2/image_hu_8439b953393c033f.webp","webp2x":"/news/2020/07/2/image_hu_2449e80e381b7857.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2020/07/2.html","regions":["oryol","kursk"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["complaints","review","life-in-prison","mitigation","fabrications","health-risk","strict-conditions"],"title":"What Did the Prison and Prosecutor's Office Do to Prevent the Danish Believer Dennis Christensen From Going Free?","type":"news"},{"body":"The security forces are trying to give Igor's wife, Larisa, a black bag with things seized during the first search in their apartment on February 15, 2019. She refuses to pick them up, after which law enforcement officers go home to the Petrovs, but Igor cannot participate in the investigation for health reasons. Petrov repeatedly submits a statement of refusal to pick up the seized items, fearing possible falsifications and built-in listening devices.\n","caseTitle":"The Case of Loginov and Others in Surgut","date":"2020-07-02T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/surgut/index.html#20200702","regions":["khanty-mansi"],"tags":["search","fabrications"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"The hearing on the criminal case of Yevgeny Spirin continues in the Furmanovsky City Court. Only participants in the process are allowed into the hall.\nDefense witnesses, including Spirin's former neighbor, are being questioned. She refutes the information set forth in the negative characteristics of the defendant, allegedly recorded from her words by the district police officer. Witnesses speak positively of the believer. According to them, he never spoke critically about the constitutional order and people of other religions.\n","caseTitle":"Case of Spirin in Furmanov","date":"2020-06-22T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/furmanov/index.html#20200622","regions":["ivanovo"],"tags":["first-instance","interrogation","fabrications"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"At the Lgov colony, where Dennis Christensen, one of Jehovah's Witnesses, is serving his term for faith, administrators imposed numerous absurd penalties on him to block the paying of a fine in lieu of unserved time. For example, one of the supposed “violations” was “sleeping at the time that was not set according to the daily routine.” At the time, he complained of poor health after being hospitalized for pneumonia. The prosecutor's office intervened in the case, calling the penalties illegal.\nDane Dennis Christensen, who was sentenced in February 2019 to 6 years in prison for believing in Jehovah God, has already served more than half of his sentence, and, using his legal right, filed petitions with the court with a request to replace the unserved part of the sentence with a fine.\nAfter that, pressure increased on Christensen in the colony: the administration falsifies or tries to provoke the believer to violations, the presence of which will make mitigation of punishment or early release impossible (Part 3 of Article 175 of the Penal Code of Russia).\nTo date, four ridiculous penalties (reprimands) have already been imposed on Christensen. For example, one of the \"violations\" concerned the fact that the believer \"on November 7, 2019, slept, lying in his bed at an unallotted time by the daily routine.\" At the same time, he complained of feeling unwell. In his decision to cancel this penalty, the prosecutor indicated that just two weeks before these events, Dennis was in the hospital with pneumonia, and the administration of the colony did not take into account this fact, as well as the state of health of the convict. In response, the prison authorities appealed the prosecutor's decision in order to recognize the penalty as legitimate and leave Christensen behind bars.\nMoreover, the administration started a diary in which it records the behavior of the believer, and also compiled a description of him, in which, among other things, she indicated that Christensen was \"melancholic, leads a reclusive lifestyle.\" It is noteworthy that earlier the deputy head of the colony, Igor Myasnyankin, forced Christensen to stop communicating with other prisoners, in particular, to discuss with them faith in God.\n\"Dennis Christensen has behaved and is behaving correctly towards the staff of the colony. As an independent initiative, he organized free English language training for other prisoners. The pressure from the administration is unmotivated and looks like nitpicking because of someone's personal hostility, which a decent person is forced to pay for with his freedom, \"Yaroslav Sivulsky, a representative of the European Association of Jehovah's Witnesses, comments on the situation.\n","category":"prison","date":"2020-05-14T09:29:00+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2020/05/7/image_hu_4c6985c5a8cc56ba.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2020/05/7/image.jpg","webp":"/news/2020/05/7/image_hu_de9d9718e117972.webp","webp2x":"/news/2020/05/7/image_hu_7a903127519bbeb.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2020/05/7.html","regions":["oryol","kursk"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["life-in-prison","penalty","fabrications","health-risk"],"title":"The Colony Administration Increased Pressure on Dennis Christensen, Trying to Prevent Him From Going Free","type":"news"},{"body":"On January 14, 2020, the judge of the Industrial District Court of Orenburg, Tatyana Gorbacheva, returned the criminal case against 7 believers to the prosecutor's office due to the vague nature of the charges and the lack of motives and goals of the alleged crime.\nIn its ruling, the court noted that \"the indictment must indicate the motives and purposes of committing crimes,\" which is not the case. The court also noted that the indictment did not specify exactly how the defendants Logunov and Suvorov \"coordinated the activities of the Orenburg LRO of Jehovah's Witnesses ... coordinated and coordinated their actions on the leadership of the LRO of Jehovah's Witnesses \"Orenburg\" with a higher organization, received religious literature, including extremist content, from the Religious Organization \"Administrative Center of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia\". It is noted that it is often unclear from the prosecution which actions were committed by Logunov and which by Suvorov.\nThe criminal case against Vladimir Kochnev, Alexander Suvorov, Vladislav Kolbanov, Pavel Lekontsev, Sergey Logunov, Alexey Matveev and Nikolai Zhugin was initiated on May 14, 2018, after which Kochnev and Suvorov were thrown into a pre-trial detention center for 78 days. In October 2019, the investigation decided to change the articles of the charge.\n","category":"trial","date":"2020-01-23T17:03:05+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/common/referee%27s%20hammer_hu_e61407e80aeeed36.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/common/referee%27s%20hammer_hu_c14b36c0a2ff5d39.jpg","webp":"/news/common/referee%27s%20hammer_hu_405964db8d174b22.webp","webp2x":"/news/common/referee%27s%20hammer_hu_685714836a74948b.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2020/01/29.html","regions":["orenburg"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["case-to-prosecutor","fabrications"],"title":"The court returned to the prosecutor's office a criminal case against 7 believers from Orenburg. Two of them spent almost 3 months in jail","type":"news"},{"body":"Andrey Magliv, Vladimir Kulyasov, Denis Timoshin were sentenced to 4 years in prison, and Tatyana Alushkina and Galiya Olkhova were sentenced to 3 years each. Everyone except Vladimir Alushkin is asked by the prosecutor to replace the prison with forced labor. Meanwhile, the UN Working Group officially recognized Alushkin's arrest as arbitrary.\nThe prosecutor requested such severe sanctions on December 5, 2019, speaking in a debate in the Leninsky District Court of Penza. All the \"guilt\" of peaceful Penza residents is faith in Jehovah God. Six people are defendants in the case. Four men are under house arrest and two women are under recognizance agreement. The case is replete with falsifications and inconsistencies. Believers are accused of extremism, although these accusations are not confirmed by witnesses or international arbitrators. A crime is called a joint discussion of the Bible, singing songs with fellow believers, conversations with others about God. Investigators unreasonably consider these actions to be the organization of the activities of a religious organization banned in Russia, although the Supreme Court of Russia did not prohibit the faith of Jehovah's Witnesses itself.\nEven before the arrest, the special services monitored the believers for several months, then in July 2018 they staged mass searches and detentions. Vladimir Alushkin, whom the prosecutor's office considers the \"leader\" of local believers, was sent by the court to a pre-trial detention center, where he stayed for about six months and was then released under house arrest.\nThe defense tried to appeal against the arrest and measure of restraint of the believers, demanding that the appellate instances declare them illegal. However, the judges of the Penza Regional Court refused to do this and repeatedly extended the terms of the preventive measure.\nAt the same time, the panel of judges ignores the opinion of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, according to which the activities, in particular, of Vladimir Alushkin (and since he is called the \"leader\", the rest of the arrested Jehovah's Witnesses) cannot be considered extremist. \"All the activities in which Alushkin took part are an absolutely peaceful religious discussion,\" the UN Working Group said in a document.\nDuring the trial, several witnesses, including the main prosecution witness, did not confirm that the defendants' actions were in any way related to extremism. From the interrogations of other witnesses given during the court hearings, it follows that the investigation falsified their preliminary testimony, and some openly exerted pressure.\nThe continuation of the debate is scheduled for 10.12.2019. There will be a defense.\n","category":"trial","date":"2019-12-05T15:51:27+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2019/12/1450/web_image_alushin_vladimir_hu_66ed08d09368c457.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2019/12/1450/web_image_alushin_vladimir_hu_63592e7cf956cc7c.jpg","webp":"/news/2019/12/1450/web_image_alushin_vladimir_hu_352d226901714db8.webp","webp2x":"/news/2019/12/1450/web_image_alushin_vladimir_hu_28b0543ff7f52e25.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2019/12/1450.html","regions":["penza"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["prosecutor-request","liberty-deprivation","suspended","labor","families","fabrications"],"title":"In Penza, the prosecutor asked Vladimir Alushkin for 7 years of real prison! The supervisory body ignored the opinion of the UN on this case ","type":"news"},{"body":"On November 27, 2019, the Naberezhnye Chelny City Court refused to consider the case against Ilham Karimov, Konstantin Matrashov, Vladimir Myakushin and Aydar Yulmetyev. The court pointed to a significant violation of the law committed at the pre-trial stage and returned the case to the prosecutor of the Republic of Tatarstan.\nThe court drew attention to the fact that the investigators handed the defendants one text of the charge, and presented another to the court with a significantly expanded charge. In addition, the investigation, followed by the prosecutor's office, qualified the actions of believers under parts 1 and 2 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation completely arbitrarily, clearly not understanding what, in fact, their \"crime\" was.\nDespite the court's bold decision to return the case, the believers remain under recognizance not to leave. The case against them has not been closed.\nUpdate. On February 14, the Supreme Court of Tatarstan considered the appeal against the return of the criminal case to the prosecutor and upheld the decision of the lower court. A dark period in the history of religious freedom in Tatarstan began on May 27, 2018. Law enforcement officers raided 10 apartments of local residents who were suspected of practicing the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses. Searches and interrogations in the homes of peaceful believers began on Sunday evening and continued until late at night. Law enforcement officers introduced themselves as employees of the Investigative Committee and the FSB. All electronic devices, mobile phones, and passports were confiscated from the believers, including four men, 10 women (including the elderly) and a child.\nIlham Karimov, 37, Vladimir Myakushin, 30, Konstantin Matrashov, 29, and Aidar Yulmetyev, 24, were arrested and sent to a pre-trial detention center for six months. After that, each of them spent another 2 months under house arrest.\nRussian law enforcement officers mistakenly mistake the joint religion of citizens for participation in an extremist organization. This criminal prosecution is a direct consequence of the decision of the Supreme Court of Russia, which on April 20, 2017, liquidated and recognized as \"extremist\" 396 registered religious organizations of Jehovah's Witnesses throughout the country.\n","category":"trial","date":"2019-11-29T17:35:54+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2019/11/1434/123456789_hu_79a2e02e99332800.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2019/11/1434/123456789_hu_b68329bcdf142253.jpg","webp":"/news/2019/11/1434/123456789_hu_b4d5e933fcf14829.webp","webp2x":"/news/2019/11/1434/123456789_hu_91f12af3f381c077.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2019/11/1434.html","regions":["tatarstan"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["sizo","fabrications","case-to-prosecutor","recognizance-agreement"],"title":"Four believers from Tatarstan spent six months in a pre-trial detention center - and now the court has returned their case to the prosecutor because of falsifications!","type":"news"},{"body":"On October 10, 2019, the Kirov Regional Court canceled the arrest of Anatoly Tokarev's apartment, imposed earlier by the court of first instance. The court ruled that it is against the law to seize the property of believers in case the court imposes a fine on them under an \"extremist\" article.\nThe decision to arrest the apartment and garden belonging to the family of Anatoly Tokarev was made on July 1, 2019 by Sergey Skorobogaty, a judge of the Oktyabrsky District Court of Kirov. At the same time, housing with a plot of land is in the possession of Lydia Kachurina, the mother of 60-year-old Tokarev. Later, after an appeal filed by the believers, the authorities changed their minds about arresting the garden, but the apartment in which Anatoly's mother lives remained under arrest. Then an appeal was filed with the Kirov Regional Court.\nThe Kirov Regional Court, considering the appeal of Anatoly Tokarev, made the following conclusion: the seizure of property in order to ensure the payment of a fine as a punishment under Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code in the future is not provided for by law. The court pointed out that a fine is only one of the possible main penalties under this article. Since a fine is one of the main types of punishment, in case of non-compliance, it can be (in accordance with Part 5 of Article 46 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) replaced by another type of punishment other than imprisonment. The possibility of such a substitution in itself guarantees its payment and the interests of criminal proceedings. As a result, the court decided to lift the arrest from the apartment of Anatoly Tokarev.\nThe threat of seizure of real estate is nothing more than pressure on believers who refuse to make a deal with the investigation. Back in May 2019, law enforcement officers threatened Anatoliy with problems for his relatives.\nAnatoly Tokarev and his family are not the only Kirov residents who have faced problems because of their religion. After a series of searches in Kirov, criminal cases were opened against at least 11 Jehovah's Witnesses. Polish citizen Andrzej Oniszczuk spent 330 days in jail. ","category":"administrative","date":"2019-11-12T16:53:00+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2019/11/1353/obl.sud_kirov_montazhnaya_oblast_1_hu_a70f0c50332c65b5.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2019/11/1353/obl.sud_kirov_montazhnaya_oblast_1_hu_9caa004525d5fc8e.jpg","webp":"/news/2019/11/1353/obl.sud_kirov_montazhnaya_oblast_1_hu_7c5f493c277bd63c.webp","webp2x":"/news/2019/11/1353/obl.sud_kirov_montazhnaya_oblast_1_hu_1410002de520a7d9.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2019/11/1353.html","regions":["kirov"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["appeal","belongings-arrest","fine","fabrications","complaints"],"title":"Court of Appeal: It is illegal to seize property to ensure payment of a fine for faith","type":"news"},{"body":"On December 29, 2018, an appeal was filed with the Supreme Court of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic against the verdict of the Prokhladnensky District Court of the KBR, which found Arkadya Hakobyan guilty under Part 1 of Article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and sentenced him to 120 hours of compulsory labor. The prosecutor asked for a 3-year suspended sentence.\nThe court's guilty decision is based on the confusing and contradictory testimony of five prosecution witnesses, which was changed and supplemented many times during the trial. The veracity of their testimony is highly questionable.\nThe court did not take into account the facts testifying in favor of the accused, as well as the circumstances that positively characterize Arkadya as a calm, non-conflict person who deeply respects people of different nationalities and religions. The criminal prosecution of this peaceful citizen is a direct violation of his civil rights.\nIt is noteworthy that the guilty verdict was announced immediately after the statement of Russian President Vladimir Putin about the need to carefully understand why Jehovah's Witnesses are declared extremists.\nExtremism, including incitement to hatred and enmity, completely contradicts the beliefs of Jehovah's Witnesses, peaceful citizens living according to the commandments of Jesus Christ. The defense asks the court to cancel the decision of the Prokhladnensky District Court and fully acquit Arkady Hakobyan, recognizing his right to rehabilitation.\n","category":"trial","date":"2019-01-04T17:01:33+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2019/01/559/web_image_2_arkadya_akopyan6942_hu_da2f73039a4f1e07.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2019/01/559/web_image_2_arkadya_akopyan6942.jpg","webp":"/news/2019/01/559/web_image_2_arkadya_akopyan6942_hu_1803295d9c5f1c21.webp","webp2x":"/news/2019/01/559/web_image_2_arkadya_akopyan6942_hu_fd759b523ac6195d.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2019/01/559.html","regions":["kabardino-balkar"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["appeal","282.2-1","fabrications","labor"],"title":"In Kabardino-Balkaria, a believer appealed against an unjust verdict","type":"news"},{"body":"To find Arkadya Akopovich Akopyan guilty under Part 1 of Article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and sentenced to 120 hours of compulsory labor. This decision was announced on December 27, 2018 by Oleg Golovashko, a judge of the Prokhladnensky District Court. There is no real evidence of Hakobyan's guilt in the case, so the verdict will be appealed. In the past, all attempts to charge individual Jehovah's Witnesses under Article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation were unsuccessful.\nThe court believed in an implausible accusation: five witnesses for the prosecution, who do not profess the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses, unanimously admitted that they had massively distributed Jehovah's Witnesses brochures with signs of extremism on behalf of Arkadi Hakobyan. The court considered all other episodes to be unproven or insignificant.\n\"Jehovah's Witnesses never instruct strangers to distribute our liturgical literature,\" says Yaroslav Sivulsky of the European Association of Jehovah's Witnesses. Finally, for some people who do not profess our religion to so unanimously undertake to spread the teachings of Jehovah's Witnesses is something out of the realm of fantasy. We are deeply saddened by the stigma of a criminal that the judge imposed on an honest, decent person.\"\nIt is noteworthy that in 2018, Russia took steps to decriminalize Part 1 of Article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation at the legislative level. Nevertheless, the court considered itself entitled to sentence a 70-year-old pensioner who worked all his life working as a tailor to punishment in the form of compulsory labor.\nEarlier, under Article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, the authorities tried to accuse Jehovah's Witnesses in Gorno-Altaisk, Yoshkar-Ola, Sergiev Posad, and Chita. All the trials that came to a verdict under this article ended with the full acquittal of believers with the right to rehabilitation.\n","category":"verdict","date":"2018-12-27T17:33:28+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2018/12/555/akopyan4501_1_hu_98852c342e22021b.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2018/12/555/akopyan4501_1.jpg","webp":"/news/2018/12/555/akopyan4501_1_hu_29915cdee3c65602.webp","webp2x":"/news/2018/12/555/akopyan4501_1_hu_4f12b431c93b4c6d.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2018/12/555.html","regions":["kabardino-balkar"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["sentence","labor","282.2-1","fabrications","elderly"],"title":"In Kabardino-Balkaria, a court convicted a peaceful believer","type":"news"},{"body":"Sergey and Zhanna Lungu have been married for two years. Although they look quite happy spouses, it is not easy for them to talk about what happened on November 15, 2018. As a result of those events, they lost a child.\nThat evening, in Dzhankoy (Crimea), one of the largest special operations in modern Russia was carried out against peaceful believers. Almost two hundred police, FSB and riot police officers were involved.\n\"I saw that there was a large crowd of employees in black masks near my gate,\" recalls Vladimir Bezhenar, \"They were crawling through my gate, and I got the impression that they were like snakes. I thought that if I didn't open the door first, they would start kicking us out, screaming and beating us. There were friends of mine in the house who were also in a state of shock.\"\nAmong his friends was Alexei Filatov. He tried to make a video recording of what was happening, but he was immediately twisted and taken to his home. It turned out that a large group of armed special forces soldiers was waiting for him at the gate, since the searches were taking place in the case against his father, Sergei Filatov. \"When I went in,\" says Sergey Filatov, \"I saw my son standing with his back to the refrigerator, he was handcuffed.\" Alexei says: \"I was handcuffed for about forty minutes before my parents arrived.\"\nMeanwhile, security forces invaded the house of 78-year-old Alexander Urs, whose name was not even mentioned in the search warrant. He painfully recalls how brutally law enforcement officers acted against him: \"I managed to take one step, I got here, he broke this arm for me, then this hand, he beats me on the legs: \"There, to the wall!\" And then I wanted to turn around and see what they were doing to my son, and he hit me back to the wall, and I hit my head. And it spreads my legs, I'm already more ... I have no strength, and I am already starting to fall, already on my knees. \"What are you doing? \"I'm going to be 80 years old, I'm resisting, or what, why are you wringing my hands out?\" And then let's search me again, from head to toe. Three times he walked over his hands, commanded: \"Hands up!\" I hold my hands up. Again: \"Hands up!\" and then he led me. His hands were brought back to me, and so, holding me back with his hands, he already led me into the house.\nThe unjustifiably harsh actions of the security forces led to the fact that some believers needed urgent medical attention. \"From what I saw, from what was happening in my house, my blood pressure began to rise,\" says Vladimir Bezhenar.- Then my left arm began to twist and my left leg began to go numb. His wife Lilia recalls: \"I see that Vova is getting worse and worse, worse and worse. They began to say that it was necessary to call an ambulance. I said: \"Of course, call an ambulance, of course!\"\" The ambulance team arrived and decided to urgently hospitalize Vladimir with a suspected stroke.\nIn the meantime, another medical team provided emergency assistance in the house of Mikhail and Lyubov Gozhan, where operatives also invaded. Lyubov had high blood pressure and a rapid heart rate, all accompanied by leg cramps. \"I felt that my blood pressure was rising, I was getting sick, I had a sting in my chest, everything was squeezing,\" says Lyubov Gozhan.- The doctor asked what was the reason for my high pulse. I say, \"Stress.\" He looked like that and said: \"Of course, from such stress and there will not be such a pulse.\"\nThe searches, which began simultaneously in 8 houses of believers, continued until late at night. Electronic devices, personal records, letters and photographs were seized.\n\"When they took me out of the house, I thought they were taking me to a pre-trial detention center, I saw correspondents with the Vesti 24 logo near my yard,\" recalls Sergey Filatov. Later, footage circulated on the air and information networks in which journalists shouted: \"Just a few words, what happened? They say that you are a sectarian. Sergey says: \"I did not answer a single word, because I understood that everything I said could be distorted and then presented incorrectly.\" The news anchor also told viewers: \"Extremist literature was found in his house, as well as manuals on psychology and recruitment.\" It wasn't true. \"Such materials were not seized during the search,\" says Sergey.- False information was given in order to highlight me, my family and my friends in a bad light. They snatched up angles that showed me in an awkward position: as if I was sitting and feeling guilty, but at the moment I was praying to Jehovah that he would give me the strength to endure it all.\"\nAfter a short conversation with the investigator, Sergey Filatov was released on his own recognizance. He was charged with \"continuing the activities of an extremist organization.\" \"In the car, I was offered cooperation,\" says Sergey.- \"I need information: all my accomplices, all my appearances, all my meetings.\" To which I refused, so they brought charges and now I am the accused.\"\nAt about the same time, law enforcement officers entered the house of Sergei and Zhanna Lungu, who were mentioned at the very beginning. There were no owners of the house. When they returned the next morning, they found obvious traces of a search. \"I saw that the door was broken into. When I go in, I see what is trampled. I also see that everything seems to be in place, but then, as we discovered, our tablet disappeared, \"says Sergey. The couple decided not to stay in the house, but to go to Zhanna's parents in Yalta. On the way, Jeanne got worse and worse, she complained of pain. They wanted to tell their parents the news of the pregnancy. \"But the very next day it turns out that I take her to the hospital, to gynecology,\" says Sergey. A day later, it became finally clear that they had lost a child. \"As soon as I was told on the ultrasound that that's it, there is no child, I have a tantrum. I couldn't even call Seryozha and tell him about it.\"\nBelievers hope that law enforcement officers will have the courage not to resort to concealing the tragedy and that, going to the next search of peaceful believers, they will at least not lose human face while doing their job.\n\"They took us ... how they take criminals, armed. We jumped over the fence. Wouldn't we have opened it if we had been told: 'Police!' but instead to break in so hard..,\" says Victor Ursu. His elderly father shows abrasions and bruises left over from the brutal actions of the security forces. But these wounds, he assures, are nothing compared to the emotional experiences and humiliations that he and his friends had to endure. \"This, one might say, is lawlessness,\" he says, \"Wringing your hands, searching. It's such a humiliation.\"\n\"Life in our family began to divide into before and after,\" admits Vladimir Bezhenar.- All in the aggregate: the feelings that we experienced that evening, the humiliation - moral, physical and much more.\nMany of those who were searched in Dzhankoy know from childhood what persecution for faith is. But, according to them, they have never faced such ill-treatment. \"There has never been such treatment,\" says Alexandru Ursu, \"neither in childhood, when they were evicted, nor when there were still searches , nor when they were summoned and talked.\" \"No one allowed himself, for example, to wring his hands, to beat his legs,\" adds his son Victor. \"No one climbed over the gate, no one surrounded the house, there were no people with such weapons,\" says Lilia Bejenari.\nBelievers still try to find the positive. \"Some people met us and said: 'We pray for your family,'\" says Lilia Bezhenari. People understood that... Well, you can't do that to us, we're not the same people! What have we done wrong?\"\nEven the country's president called the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses \"complete nonsense\" and promised to look into the matter. \"Regarding Jehovah's Witnesses. [...] Of course, this is sheer nonsense, we must look into it carefully, and I agree with you on this. [...] Jehovah's Witnesses are also Christians, and I also don't really understand why they should be persecuted\" (from the transcript of Vladimir Putin's speech at a meeting of the Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights on December 11, 2018).\nIn the meantime, Sergey Filatov, a father of four, is forced to travel to Simferopol for interrogations every week. \"I'm worried about my family, about my children, because I don't know what to expect next from law enforcement officers, because they have already stigmatized me as a criminal.\"\nThe day after the searches, Vladimir Bezhenar was transferred to inpatient treatment. Fortunately, his suspicions of a stroke were not confirmed. \"I don't know when we'll recover from this condition,\" says his wife, \"and he's on such serious pills that help him calm down a little.\"\nLyubov Gozhan still takes drugs that normalize blood pressure, and can not sleep without sedatives, as well as other victims. \"It was a lot of stress for me,\" she says, \"I couldn't sleep for several nights. For me, it was scary when the evening came.\nSergey and Zhanna really hope that they will definitely have a baby.\n","category":"eyewitnesses","date":"2018-12-27T13:29:03+03:00","duration":"10:33","image":{"jpg":"/news/2018/12/554/djankoy_size750x375_hu_36062ada3258e634.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2018/12/554/djankoy_size750x375.jpg","webp":"/news/2018/12/554/djankoy_size750x375_hu_c737e953cb12c643.webp","webp2x":"/news/2018/12/554/djankoy_size750x375_hu_108a5030bbbefdd0.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2018/12/554.html","regions":["crimea"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["search","health-risk","minors","elderly","fabrications","recognizance-agreement","siloviks-violence"],"title":"Dzhankoy after the raid: how persecution cripples the lives of believers ","type":"video"},{"body":"On December 21, 2018, the arguments of the parties in the case of 70-year-old Arkadi Hakobyan began in the Prokhladnensky District Court (Kabardino-Balkaria). He is charged under Part 1 of Article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The prosecutor asked him for 3 years of suspended imprisonment with a probation period of 2 years.\nArkadia Hakobyan, a native of a small Armenian village in Azerbaijan, came to Kabardino-Balkaria with his wife and three children in 1988, fleeing ethnic violence caused by the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. He met Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia in the early 90s, amazed at the fact that this religious group was alien to the ideas of interethnic hostility and violence.\nLaw enforcement agencies had no complaints against Hakobyan until the security forces launched a campaign in Russia to harass Jehovah's Witnesses on the basis of far-fetched accusations.\nArkady Hakobyan was accused of distributing banned literature, as well as inciting hatred. The accusations are based on the testimony of six witnesses who said they attended meetings of Jehovah's Witnesses and heard Hakobyan speak disrespectfully about Muslims and Orthodox priests.\nThe court examined the evidence of the parties for a year and a half. During the hearings, facts indicating the fabrication of the case were voiced.\nOne of them is the billing of witnesses' mobile phones. He pointed out that during the religious meetings, the prosecution witnesses not only did not attend services on many of the days declared, but were not even in the city of Prokhladny. In addition, the billing revealed a close relationship between witnesses and law enforcement officers, which casts doubt on the impartiality of the testimony.\nThe witnesses themselves became confused in their testimonies and could not describe the details of where and how Hakobyan \"committed the crime.\" It turned out that on the day when, according to the case file, Arkady Hakobyan expressed \"hatred or enmity\" against representatives of other religions from the stage, he did not speak at all at a meeting of Jehovah's Witnesses.\nArkadya Hakobyan denies the accusations and claims that he never saw prosecution witnesses at religious meetings until the day law enforcement officers came to the Kingdom Hall and banned literature was planted in the building. That day he saw for the first time one of these prosecution witnesses, who tried to smuggle banned literature into the building. Most of the prosecution witnesses he saw only in court or during investigative actions.\nAfter Arkadya Hakobyan delivers his last speech, the judge of the Prokhladnensky District Court will leave for sentencing.\n","category":"trial","date":"2018-12-21T12:31:16+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2018/12/547/akopyan4501_0_0_0_hu_ebf358a1894dd600.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2018/12/547/akopyan4501_0_0_0.jpg","webp":"/news/2018/12/547/akopyan4501_0_0_0_hu_61e31a015a6e0439.webp","webp2x":"/news/2018/12/547/akopyan4501_0_0_0_hu_5b30c12b309343b9.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2018/12/547.html","regions":["kabardino-balkar"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["prosecutor-request","defense-arguments","elderly","fabrications","plant","suspended"],"title":"The prosecutor's office in the city of Prokhladny demanded a 3-year suspended sentence for the believer","type":"news"},{"body":"On October 9, 2018, in the city of Kirov, during a search in the house of pensioner Vladimir Bogomolov, who collects artifacts from the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945), investigators seized fragments of obviously incapable rusted shells. The man was searched because his 69-year-old wife (the only one of her entire family) professes the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses. The woman does not share her husband's passion for antiques. Thus, the report that the ammunition was allegedly seized from Jehovah's Witnesses is not true.\nJehovah's Witnesses do not take up arms for reasons of conscience. For this position, they appeared before the tribunals of different countries and went to concentration camps. They will be grateful to the media for clarifying the misunderstanding.\nVladimir Bogomolov, from whom the relics were seized, in the past an active participant in the search movement (aimed at burying the remains of soldiers who died in the Great Patriotic War), the foreman of the search party. The activities of his detachment were written in the newspapers. On October 9, 2018, a criminal case was opened on the discovery of artifacts on illegal possession of weapons, it was separated into a separate proceeding. The items were sent for examination.\nThe criminal prosecution of peaceful believers, including searches and arrests of civilians in Kirov, was the result of a miscarriage of justice—the recognition of all registered Jehovah's Witnesses organizations in Russia as \"extremist.\" Believers will appeal this decision to the European Court of Human Rights. The Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation expresses concern about the growing religious repression.\n","category":"crime","date":"2018-10-12T19:19:13+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2018/10/489/depositphotos_215301272_hu_caee271291cb7333.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2018/10/489/depositphotos_215301272.jpg","webp":"/news/2018/10/489/depositphotos_215301272_hu_e5eb64641ac75ca9.webp","webp2x":"/news/2018/10/489/depositphotos_215301272_hu_20f15e060acd3cb7.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2018/10/489.html","regions":["kirov"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["search","elderly","new-case","fabrications"],"title":"Jehovah's Witnesses have nothing to do with ammunition in Kirov","type":"news"},{"body":"At the meeting, the billing of telephone connections of prosecution witness Viktor Popov, director of school No. 42 in Prokhladny, was examined. Popov was a witness during a search of the worship hall of Jehovah's Witnesses when banned literature was found there. He testified that he had received a call from \"Anastasia Shtangeeva\" urging him to \"resort to the true faith.\"\nOlga Makarova, a resident of Prokhladny, a witness for the prosecution, said she attended meetings of Jehovah's Witnesses from July to August 2016. There, in her words, \"she was treated well,\" but Zalipaev \"made bad statements against Islam and Christianity.\" Zalipayev \"spoke inappropriately against Islam, against Muslims\" and called for \"psychological and physical influence on persons professing other religions,\" \"said to beat,\" Makarova said. She could not recall the exact statements, but indicated that the August 2009 magazine \"Awake!\" had been distributed at the meetings. Makarova said she was \"advised\" to distribute literature, and in August, together with a woman \"who looked like a parishioner,\" she handed out \"thin pamphlets like leaflets\" in Mayskoye, the contents of which she also could not remember. At first, Makarova said that she had received literature from Zalipaev. Then - that the publications were freely available in the lobby of the worship building and they \"could be taken by any parishioner.\" According to Makarova, she learned that the literature was \"extremist\" during a search of the building. By extremism, Makarova means that believers \"are good speakers, they involve them well in their organization, they promote their faith.\" When asked what was embarrassing in the literature itself, Makarova replied: \"It's intuitive ... Once closed, it means that something is wrong. Makarova also communicated with Anastasia, as she stated, only by phone and \"to Jehovah's Witnesses.\"\nWitness Vitaly Beriev said that he and a friend received from a certain woman several magazines \"Awake!\" and \"The Watchtower\" from 15-20 years ago, which looked \"as if they had been taken out of old vaults.\" They threw the magazines into the trash can, not reading. He said that he also received a phone call from a woman to talk about religious topics, and confirmed that he knew from his work with FSB officer Svetikov. Beriev could not explain why he was invited as a witness for the search.\nThe key witness for the prosecution, Yevgeny Kireev, was interrogated, after whose statement a search was conducted in the liturgical building. According to him, Zalipayev at religious meetings encouraged moral pressure on representatives of other faiths, and during the search called for obstruction of the security forces. According to Kireyev, his son-in-law, a programmer, told him that Jehovah's Witnesses were an \"extremist religion,\" after which they jointly filed a statement with law enforcement agencies. After that, Kireyev continued to attend meetings of Jehovah's Witnesses because \"it was interesting.\" Kireyev told the court that even before he began his visits to worship meetings, he had received a phone call from \"Anastasia Shtangeeva,\" whom he described as \"Zalipayev's right-hand man.\" During the search, according to Kireyev, believers indignantly declared that the literature found by the security forces had been planted.\nTestimony was also given by the head of the search in the Kingdom Hall, an employee of the CPE of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the CBD, Timur Tligachev. The search was carried out after \"they said that Zalipayev was distributing literature from the Ministry of Justice (meaning the federal list of extremist materials),\" Tligachev explained. As he claimed, during the search he was insulted by believers. How exactly, Tligachev found it difficult to say. Having found the literature, the officers called the investigative-operational group - \"there was an instruction from above.\" Who gave it, Tligachev did not remember.\n","caseTitle":"Case of Zalipayev in Mayskiy","date":"2018-09-11T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/mayskiy/index.html#20180911","regions":["kabardino-balkar"],"tags":["first-instance","fabrications","plant"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"Five law enforcement officers were questioned at the court hearing. One of them, Victoria Khamdokhova, participated in the search in the Kingdom Hall and drew up a protocol on an administrative offense against Zalipayev. Khamdokhova considered that the literature belonged to Zalipaev, based on the statement of Yevgeny Kireev (a key witness for the prosecution, at whose request the search was conducted in the liturgical building), after which the search began. The witness is not aware that Zalipayev publicly called for beating Muslims and Orthodox Christians. Although other witnesses reported that believers were outraged by the planting of literature from the list of extremist materials, Hamdokhova said that no one voiced complaints during the search. Hamdokhova also admitted that the security forces seized the tablets on which those present filmed a video of what was happening. The witness also admitted that she had called up FSB officer Svetikov on the phone, the number of which was indicated by the defense.\nAnother witness, traffic police inspector Vladimir Makhmudov, said that he did not know the facts of the attack of Jehovah's Witnesses on representatives of other religions. The same testimony was given by other prosecution witnesses questioned that day.\nTraffic police officer Vladimir Bochkov, who was invited to court by the prosecution, said that he \"does not know anything and does not understand at all why he was invited here.\" On the day of the search, Bochkov was on duty near the Kingdom Hall.\nWitness Sultan Kumakhov took part in the search. He explained that he had interrogated the witness Kireyev, who, in his words, was \"one of the parishioners.\" Kireyev saw extremist statements in the brochure of Jehovah's Witnesses. Referring to Kireyev, Kumakhov also said that Zalipayev exalted his faith over others. At the same time, Kumakhov did not receive confirmation of this information from anyone else.\nTimur Friev, an employee of the CPE, was part of the task force that conducted the search. He said that during the events in the worship building, believers announced the planting of literature. He also claimed that he did not know the FSB officer Svetikov, but could not clarify how the billing revealed the fact of his telephone conversations with him. Friev also did not hear Zalipayev utter offensive remarks, calls for pressure and violence.\nThe testimony was given by the director of School No. 42 Prokhladny, Viktor Popov, who described the circumstances of the search in court. He confirmed that the believers claimed that the case was fabricated and said that during the search in the Hall the lights were turned off for several minutes. Thus, the circumstances of the survey, which, according to believers, was intentionally carried out after it got dark, were confirmed.\n","caseTitle":"Case of Zalipayev in Mayskiy","date":"2018-09-07T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/mayskiy/index.html#20180907","regions":["kabardino-balkar"],"tags":["first-instance","fabrications","plant"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"On August 27, the Maysky District Court of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic continued hearings in the criminal case against Yuriy Zalipayev, who faces up to 5 years in prison for his faith.\nFive witnesses were questioned at the trial: three members of the operational-investigative team who in August 2016 participated in the seizure of literature at the place of worship in Maysky, an assistant prosecutor and one local resident.\nSenior Assistant Prosecutor Denis Shapovalov testified that he was not aware of any cases of distribution of extremist literature by Jehovah's Witnesses in Mayskoye. This is what the investigation accuses Yuriy Zalipaev. According to Denis Alekseevich, believers are well aware of what literature is included in the Federal List of Extremist Materials and do not use it. He also confirmed the arguments of the defense that almost all witnesses in the case received calls from the phone, the number of which belongs to the FSB officer Svetikov Sergey Alexandrovich.\nTwo members of the investigative team said that although they seized \"extremist\" literature, it was discovered before their arrival and they did not know by whom.\nFinally, an interrogated local resident, an education worker, told the court that in August 2016, an unknown woman gave him the magazine \"Awaken!\", which he immediately threw away. It remains unclear how investigators found the man, who received the literature a full year before the first interrogation in the case.\nAccording to the prosecution, Yuriy Zalipayev distributed banned literature and also called on other Jehovah's Witnesses to beat Orthodox Christians and Muslims. The believer rejects these accusations. He faces up to 5 years in prison under Part 1 of Article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (incitement to hatred or enmity) and under Part 1 of Article 280 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (public calls for extremist activities).\nThe next meeting is scheduled for September 7, 14:00. The dates of subsequent meetings are tentatively known: 17, 21, 24 and 28 September; October 19.\n","category":"trial","date":"2018-08-31T16:57:41+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2018/08/469/web_image_001_hu_aa5f22494f1cdfc.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2018/08/469/web_image_001.jpg","webp":"/news/2018/08/469/web_image_001_hu_a7fbb238204d7b6c.webp","webp2x":"/news/2018/08/469/web_image_001_hu_ba9ed42269298618.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2018/08/469.html","regions":["kabardino-balkar"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["first-instance","interrogation","fsem","282.2-1","280-1","fabrications"],"title":"A criminal trial for faith against a local resident continued in Mayskoye","type":"news"},{"body":"Senior Assistant Prosecutor of the Maisky District Denis Shapovalov was interrogated. He confirmed that the phone number from which the falsification of evidence was coordinated belongs to FSB officer Sergei Svetikov. According to Shapovalov, he is not aware of any Jehovah's Witnesses distributing literature on the federal list of extremist materials.\nThe testimony was given by a local resident, Yuri Vodogretsky, an employee of the Children's Academy of Creativity in Mayskoye. He said that a certain woman in August 2016 gave him and his friend from the magazine \"Awake!\". They threw the literature into the trash can. The witness could not explain how the security forces learned about the events of almost a year ago and invited him to testify in the Zalipayev case. He also stated that he was not aware of the attempts of the security forces to recruit false witnesses from the field of education, in which Yuriy Zalipayev had previously worked.\n","caseTitle":"Case of Zalipayev in Mayskiy","date":"2018-08-27T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/mayskiy/index.html#20180827","regions":["kabardino-balkar"],"tags":["first-instance","fabrications"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"On July 16, 2018, the Maysky District Court of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic began hearing on the merits of the criminal case against Yuriy Zalipayev. The hearings began with a statement by the public prosecutor of the merits of the charges. In his opinion, the defendant not only spoke unflatteringly about Muslims and Orthodox Christians, but called on other Jehovah's Witnesses to beat them, and also distributed religious literature, the distribution of which is prohibited in Russia, to non-Jehovah's Witnesses, so that they would distribute it instead of Jehovah's Witnesses.\nDefense lawyer Anton Omelchenko noted in his speech that the investigator refused to attach almost two volumes of written evidence collected by the defense, and refused to conduct an author's study, which would be guaranteed to show that Yuriy Zalipayev did not utter the statements attributed to him. Moreover, law enforcement agencies tried to destroy videos of how evidence against Zalipayev was falsified.\nAccording to the lawyer, the prosecution itself presented evidence to the court that law enforcement agencies destroyed some evidence, falsified others, and when they realized that they had been exposed, they began to take measures aimed at concealing their illegal activities. The falsification of evidence was coordinated from a telephone belonging to FSB officer Sergei Svetikov. The fact that this phone belonged in the testimony was personally confirmed by the district police commissioner of the department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation in the Maisky district, Alexander Savinov. At the same time, the district police officer never observed that Jehovah's Witnesses showed violence against Muslims or Orthodox Christians.\nYuriy Zalipayev faces up to 5 years in prison under Part 1 of Article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - \"incitement of hatred or enmity, as well as humiliation of human dignity\", as well as under Part 1 of Article 280 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation \"public calls for extremist activities\". The hearing will continue on August 27, 2018 at 10:00 a.m.\n","category":"trial","date":"2018-07-19T21:46:34+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2018/07/371/web_image_004_hu_c63ab045bfefac6e.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2018/07/371/web_image_004.jpg","webp":"/news/2018/07/371/web_image_004_hu_f7d0b939df53a249.webp","webp2x":"/news/2018/07/371/web_image_004_hu_d53067346a2832ca.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2018/07/371.html","regions":["kabardino-balkar"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["first-instance","fabrications"],"title":"Hearings in a criminal case against a believer in the Elbrus region have begun","type":"news"},{"body":"The hearing on the merits began with a statement by the public prosecutor of the merits of the charges. In his opinion, the defendant not only spoke unflatteringly about Muslims and Orthodox Christians, but called on other Jehovah's Witnesses to beat them, and also distributed religious literature, the distribution of which is prohibited in Russia, to non-Jehovah's Witnesses, so that they would distribute it instead of Jehovah's Witnesses.\nDefense lawyer Anton Omelchenko noted in his speech that the investigator refused to attach almost two volumes of written evidence collected by the defense, and refused to conduct an author's study, which would be guaranteed to show that Yuriy Zalipayev did not utter the statements attributed to him. Moreover, law enforcement agencies tried to destroy videos of how evidence against Zalipayev was falsified.\nAccording to the lawyer, the prosecution itself presented evidence to the court that law enforcement agencies destroyed some evidence, falsified others, and when they realized that they had been exposed, they began to take measures aimed at concealing their illegal activities. The falsification of evidence was coordinated from a telephone belonging to FSB officer Sergei Svetikov.\nThe fact that this phone belonged in the testimony was personally confirmed by the district police commissioner of the department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation in the Maisky district, Alexander Savinov. At the same time, the district police officer never observed that Jehovah's Witnesses showed violence against Muslims or Orthodox Christians.\n","caseTitle":"Case of Zalipayev in Mayskiy","date":"2018-07-16T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/mayskiy/index.html#20180716","regions":["kabardino-balkar"],"tags":["first-instance","fabrications"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"On December 7, 2017, the Sestroretsky District Court of St. Petersburg made an unprecedented decision to seize a large real estate complex in St. Petersburg from a foreign organization, recognizing the 17-year-old transaction as invalid.\n\"We are talking about 14 buildings with an area of 33,000 square meters,\" says Yaroslav Sivulsky of the European Association of Jehovah's Witnesses.- They are located on 10 hectares of beautiful, landscaped territory in the village of Solnechnoye, this is the Kurortny district of St. Petersburg. And this complex was transferred to the possession of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania in 2000.\nDuring the 4-hour court session, exhaustive evidence was presented confirming the legality of the transfer of the complex to a foreign owner.\nAttorney Victor Shipilov explained, \"For example, in the 2000's, in 2007, the transfer of property to the ownership of the Watch Tower Bible and Tracts Society of Pennsylvania was carefully checked, and no violations by the prosecutor's office were found, no claims were made.\"\n\"The Watch Tower Society had to pay taxes, even though the Administrative Center, as a religious organization registered under Russian law, was exempt from paying taxes on land and real estate,\" lawyer Artur Leontiev explained. This amount amounted to about three million dollars. It is clear that making an imaginary deal purely for the sake of appearance or on paper, no one would spend that kind of money.\nNotably, the Watch Tower Society was not allowed to participate in the April 2017 hearings before the Russian Supreme Court. Then the Supreme Court refused to involve the \"Society\" in the case, arguing that the interests of this organization were not affected in any way.\nArtur Leontiev: \"In simple terms, this situation can be compared with the fact that I, for example, am the owner of the apartment in which my relative lives, and some law enforcement agencies make claims to this relative on far-fetched, perhaps, grounds and say that he violated something. Representatives of the state come to me and say: \"Give me an apartment!\" I say: \"Why?\" - \"Well, because your relative, in our opinion, violated the law.\" I said: \"I'm sorry, I didn't break the law, they didn't make any claims against me. Why do you want to take my property?\" but nevertheless they say, 'Yes, we want to take it.'\"\nIt is worth noting that the Russian Federation did not finance the construction of the complex. An abandoned pioneer camp located on this territory was purchased commercially by Jehovah's Witnesses from one of the Russian enterprises.\nYaroslav Sivulsky: \"This complex was built at the expense of foreign religious organizations and exclusively by the believers themselves. So there is nothing illogical in the fact that these buildings were subsequently donated to the Watch Tower Society, at whose request the construction was carried out.\nAlexander Blokhin recalls: \"We saw with what enthusiasm, dedication, desire, joy fellow believers from many countries take part in this. They came with trailers, they lived there, in these trailers. That is, people made specific sacrifices. Today, seeing that what was built with such love, with such sacrifices, with such dedication, is simply taken away. It's just humanly very sad and painful.\" His wife Olga shares her feelings: \"It seems that a part of your heart was torn off from you, because smells, plants, everything that was there, as if it were all with your own hands, and a lot of soul was put into it.\"\nRecall that this happened in Russia only once, namely 100 years ago, in 1918. Then, by the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars, all the property of the Russian Orthodox Church was taken away. The decision of the Sestroretsky District Court has no analogues in the history of modern Russia.\nMikhail Sitnikov, journalist: \"If we proceed from normal human understanding, then this is a robbery. Actually, the same violence, the other side of the same violence, which was expressed in discrimination against religion and believers, was expressed in insults when they broke in during worship. It is expressed now in the fact that they are trying to take everything to the skin.\nGerhard Bézier, religious scholar: \"Such a step surprised me, because it harms the image of Russia in certain circles. In my opinion, there is no benefit for Russia in this. We must not give up trying to convey to the public what is happening, and especially to reach out to thinking people around the world.\"\nRoman Lunkin, religious scholar: \"I think that the time will come when the Russian state will have to carry out the same partial restitution of religious property that has been taking place since 2010 in relation to the Russian Orthodox Church and, of course, the state will sooner or later have to return to the principles of religious freedom, which means returning to Jehovah's Witnesses what is now being confiscated.\"\n\"If the case is considered purely according to the law, then we believe that the decision of the Sestroretsky District Court should be canceled and the prosecutor's claim should be denied,\" said lawyer Artur Leontiev. If any other considerations prevail, well, then we will continue the appeal further.\n\"Jehovah's Witnesses have dedicated all the property that can be seized to Jehovah God,\" says Yaroslav Sivulsky. Therefore, we believe that it belongs to God and is taken away from God. And the Bible teaches us to put all our worries on Him.\"\n","category":"overview","date":"2018-04-25T18:24:51+03:00","duration":"6:10","image":{"jpg":"/news/2018/04/305/solnechnoye_hu_80cc18bdd8229dbd.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2018/04/305/solnechnoye.jpg","webp":"/news/2018/04/305/solnechnoye_hu_b3b41bc3b5c09428.webp","webp2x":"/news/2018/04/305/solnechnoye_hu_6bf156ba7abdbb29.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2018/04/305.html","regions":["stpetersburg"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["review","fabrications","video","administrative-center"],"title":"Seizure of foreign property by Russian authorities","type":"video"},{"body":"In the dock of the Prokhladnensky city court is 70-year-old Arkady Akopovich Hakobyan, who worked all his life with his own hands, fled to the city of Prokhladny (Kabardino-Balkaria) from ethnic violence on the territory of Azerbaijan. Arkadya Akopovich is a Jehovah's Witness by religion, which is why he is now being prosecuted under the article \"extremism\" (part 1 of article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).\nThe accusation is based on the testimony of five prosecution witnesses who, not being followers of the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses, claim that they allegedly distributed Jehovah's Witnesses publications en masse on behalf of Hakobyan only after attending several religious meetings (which is implausible in itself). In addition, these people claim that during the service, Hakobyan gave a speech in which he criticized other religions. Earlier, Hakobyan appealed to the Investigative Committee of Russia with a request to bring these five witnesses to criminal responsibility for false testimony. However, his criminal complaint has not yet been properly vetted.\nThe court began consideration of the case on May 16, 2017. 9 volumes of the case were read out and prosecution witnesses were questioned. Due to the weakness of the evidence, the state prosecutor even involved as witnesses for the prosecution police officers who did not see the facts of the distribution of literature and did not attend religious services, but only participated in operational-search actions against believers. On January 10, 2018, the public prosecutor announced the completion of the presentation of evidence.\nOn January 11, 30 and 31, 2018, the defense presented its evidence to the court. Lawyers claim that there was no crime itself, that is, Hakobyan did not give the speech that the prosecution witnesses spoke about. Interestingly, the lawyers provided the court with information about the location of the mobile phones of the prosecution witnesses, and it turned out that none of them was even near the worship building on the specified day. In order to somehow justify themselves, prosecution witnesses falsely stated that believers \"were forbidden to bring mobile phones to worship services,\" so they \"did not take them with them.\" Naturally, the lawyers were also able to present evidence to the court that there is no ban on mobile phones, that believers brought phones with them to worship services and even broadcast a spiritual program for those who are sick. This served as additional evidence of perjury. In addition, the prosecution witnesses incorrectly named both the interior of the worship building and the composition of the religious groups in which the services were held. Finally, numerous testimonies were presented to the court that these citizens were not present at the service.\nSonya Hakobyan, the wife of the defendant, was questioned as a witness for the defense. Unlike Arkadi Akopovich, she is not a baptized Jehovah's Witness. Nevertheless, they have been happily married for about 40 years. Since becoming one of Jehovah's Witnesses 25 years ago, her husband has never forced her or her children to change their religion. All this does not correspond to the accusation of \"extremism\" brought against Hakobyan. Both the family and neighbors, including people of different nationalities, cultures and religions, respect Arkada, know him as a kind and sympathetic person.\nThe hearing of the case will continue in the Prokhladnensky City Court on February 20, 2018 at 10:00.\n","category":"trial","date":"2018-02-01T23:05:06+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2018/02/283/akopyan4501_0_hu_98852c342e22021b.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2018/02/283/akopyan4501_0.jpg","webp":"/news/2018/02/283/akopyan4501_0_hu_29915cdee3c65602.webp","webp2x":"/news/2018/02/283/akopyan4501_0_hu_4f12b431c93b4c6d.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2018/02/283.html","regions":["kabardino-balkar"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["first-instance","elderly","fabrications"],"title":"In the Elbrus region, a peaceful respected person is being tried for his faith","type":"news"},{"body":"Experts will come to the Ostankino District Court of Moscow and from there answer questions from the Leningrad Regional Court (St. Petersburg) via videoconferencing. The court intends to clarify the inconsistencies noted in the examination.\nEarlier, the Vyborg court ruled to recognize the Russian Bible, published by Jehovah's Witnesses, as extremist material (Holy Scripture - New World Translation, 2007). The copyright holder, the Pennsylvania Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, did not agree with the court's decision and filed an appeal.\nThe first hearing in the appellate instance was held in the Leningrad Regional Court on December 6, 2017. The case is heard by a panel consisting of the presiding judge Larisa Gorbatova, the judge-rapporteur Tatyana Khruleva and the judge Igor Kosarev. During the hearing , the attention of the judges was attracted by obvious contradictions in the examination, on which the court of first instance relied, so it was decided to interview experts - Natalia Kryukova, V.S. Kotelnikov, A.E. Tarasov. The survey is scheduled for December 20, 2017.\nNatalia Kryukova is the permanent head of the Center for Socio-Cultural Expertise, whose work is the basis of many cases against Jehovah's Witnesses.\nThe case will be heard in the Leningrad Regional Court on December 20, 2017 at 14:30 at the address: St. Petersburg, Fontanka Embankment, 6. The experts will answer questions from the court, as well as representatives of the parties, while in the Ostankino District Court at 35, 1st Ostankinskaya Street, 312, Moscow. The participation of experts in the court session is ensured by the judge of the Ostankino court Olesya Sushkova (room 312).\n","category":"literature","date":"2017-12-19T13:07:52+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2017/12/278/171206_lenoblsud4234_hu_6ee15c9af0f51fe1.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2017/12/278/171206_lenoblsud4234.jpg","webp":"/news/2017/12/278/171206_lenoblsud4234_hu_ca579e781ec96f16.webp","webp2x":"/news/2017/12/278/171206_lenoblsud4234_hu_cc79ef655ad5ddbc.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2017/12/278.html","regions":["stpetersburg","leningrad_obl","moscow"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["Bible-ban","expert-conclusions","interrogation","bible-ban","fabrications"],"title":"On December 20, a judicial interrogation of experts who found extremism in the Bible will take place","type":"news"},{"body":"On July 26, 2017, the media reported on the detention in Kaliningrad of a man suspected of drug possession. It is not true that he is a follower of the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses.\nThe man shown in the news attended services of this religion in Kaliningrad, but long ago ceased all communication with believers. Accordingly, he was never a Jehovah's Witness, much less the \"leader of the Kaliningrad cell\" of Jehovah's Witnesses.\nJehovah's Witnesses consider the non-medical use of drugs and even tobacco smoking to be a serious sin, since the Bible teaches us to respect life and health as gifts from God, and also commands us to love our neighbor. Drug trafficking is also incompatible with the Christian morality of Jehovah's Witnesses.\n","category":"crime","date":"2017-07-31T15:17:36+03:00","duration":null,"image":false,"permalink":"/en/news/2017/07/200.html","regions":["kaliningrad"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["fabrications"],"title":"The man detained in Kaliningrad has never been one of Jehovah's Witnesses","type":"news"},{"body":"On February 7, 2017, an application was filed with the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation to initiate a criminal case against the prolific \"expert on extremism\" Natalia Nikolaevna Kryukova, the author of about 50 \"examinations\" against Jehovah's Witnesses. The evidence base sufficient to initiate a criminal case was collected by a lawyer who analyzed a number of high-profile cases related to believers of this religion.\nLawyer Viktor Zhenkov considers the activities of N. Kryukova to be a \"crime against justice\". Liability for such an offence, namely for giving false expert opinions to the court or the investigation, is provided for in article 307 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. In addition, in the activities of the expert, the lawyer sees signs of incitement to hatred, violation of equality of human and civil rights and freedoms, violation of the right to freedom of conscience and religion (Articles 282, 136, 148 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).\nAccording to the lawyer, the expert, not even having a basic philological education, misled the courts by performing \"linguistic\" examinations of the printed publications of Jehovah's Witnesses, as well as \"acts of speech activity\" of individual believers. (Natalia Nikolaevna is a mathematician and teacher by education.) Going beyond his competence, the expert cannot fail to understand that his actions lead to miscarriages of justice, which, in turn, hurt the lives of thousands of innocent people. One example is the long-term criminal prosecution of two believers in Sergiev Posad.\nIn addition, the expert's work uses the tactics of substituting the objects of study. For example, in the operative part of one of her examinations, N. Kryukova declares the presence of signs of \"extremism\" in the 115 printed publications listed by her, however, judging by the research part of the conclusion, the expert did not analyze them at all, but oral speech recorded on digital media, which is not related to 115 printed publications.\nThe actions of N. Kryukova in relation to her assessment of the Bible are indicative. According to lawyers, these actions can be qualified as forgery. To \"find\" signs of extremism in the Bible published by Jehovah's Witnesses (New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, 2007), the expert turned to the book What Does the Bible Really Teach?, which in 2010 was included in the List of Extremist Materials under number 510 (the decision to include it is being challenged by the ECHR). Having discovered that this book is completely based on the Bible, the expert concludes: it means that the Bible itself is also \"extremist\"! (Certificate of study dated August 3, 2015).\nThere are more than enough such examples, since N. Kryukova's \"expertise\" is in demand by representatives of law enforcement agencies, who are increasing the indicators of the fight against extremism on law-abiding Jehovah's Witnesses. On February 21, 2014, N. Kryukova established her own organization \"Center for Socio-Cultural Expertise\". To participate in the preparation of examinations against Jehovah's Witnesses, N. Kryukova also attracts his like-minded people - V.I. Batov, A.E. Tarasov and V.S. Kotelnikov.\nAccording to the law, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation is obliged to conduct an audit of the activities of \"experts\" and make a procedural decision.\n","category":"literature","date":"2017-02-09T17:21:34+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2017/02/95/legalcase218_hu_9b4f1f4c1b3f9a75.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2017/02/95/legalcase218.jpg","webp":"/news/2017/02/95/legalcase218_hu_28b7a7940287e308.webp","webp2x":"/news/2017/02/95/legalcase218_hu_568e7e515bd54e11.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2017/02/95.html","regions":["moscow"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["studies-violations","fabrications","slander","bible-ban","fsem"],"title":"The Investigative Committee received materials on an \"expert\" who denigrates Jehovah's Witnesses","type":"news"},{"body":"On February 9, 2017, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation considered an appeal against the liquidation of a local religious organization (LRO) of Jehovah's Witnesses in Birobidzhan. The believers tried to prove to the court that the grounds for liquidation were grossly falsified. Unfortunately, the court ignored their arguments.\nHow was the evidence against the Birobidzhan LRO falsified?\nOn February 11, 2015, three police officers, as well as an FSB officer, interrupted a worship service of Jehovah's Witnesses in a rented room. During the search, they \"found\" someone neatly camouflaged publications included in the FSEM. (Witnesses interviewed later testified that a stranger had entered the room before the service began.) On this basis, the district court fined the chairman of the LRO 4,000 rubles. The prosecutor issued a warning to the LRO about the inadmissibility of repeated \"violation\" of the law within 12 months.\nOn October 18, 2015 , believers discovered that someone had again planted banned books in the premises they rented for worship. They hurried to dispose of these items, and a few minutes later, apparently not by chance, the same police officers entered the room to search, but, of course, they could not find anything forbidden.\nOn January 21, 2016, again, the same law enforcement officers, together with others, interrupted the worship service and announced a search for \"extremist materials.\" Clustered in a corner of the room, they said they had \"found\" a stack of banned publications. However, due to the inconsistency of their actions, it turned out that that corner had already been examined a few minutes earlier by other police officers, who did not find anything forbidden there. Moreover, one of the believers saw the same bundle of literature in the hands of law enforcement officers. The believers announced another forgery. However, the district court did not listen to the arguments of the believers and again imposed a fine of 3,000 rubles on the chairman of the LRO.\nAll appeals of believers to the prosecutor's office and the Investigative Committee on the facts of these plantings were also completely ignored.\nOn October 3, 2016, it was on the basis of these fabricated \"facts\" allegedly confirming \"extremist activity\" that the Court of the Jewish Autonomous Region, at the suit of the Department of Justice for the Jewish Autonomous Region, decided to liquidate the LRO and recognize it as \"extremist\".\nThis decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation does not mean a ban on the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses in Birobidzhan. Only a specific legal entity was liquidated, which included a little more than 10 Birobidzhan residents. The profession of faith by Jehovah's Witnesses is still legal throughout the Russian Federation thanks to Article 28 of the Russian Constitution, which has not undergone any changes. (Earlier, in a similar case of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, the court, having sorted it out, issued a decision restoring justice for the Tyumen LRO of Jehovah's Witnesses.)\n","category":"verdict","date":"2017-02-09T13:49:28+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2017/02/94/supremecourt-02215_hu_6f94193f48413aef.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2017/02/94/supremecourt-02215.jpg","webp":"/news/2017/02/94/supremecourt-02215_hu_b4a658cdc4ba2873.webp","webp2x":"/news/2017/02/94/supremecourt-02215_hu_f34d62b92cfde2a.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2017/02/94.html","regions":["jewish"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["mro","liquidation","fabrications","analytics","meetings-disruption","plant"],"title":"The Supreme Court upheld the decision to liquidate the legal entity of Jehovah's Witnesses in Birobidzhan","type":"news"},{"body":"On December 20, 2016, Judge Alexander Kuryanov of the Leninsky District Court of Voronezh issued an order to suspend the activities of the local religious organization of Jehovah's Witnesses for a period of 1.5 months for allegedly \"storing extremist materials.\" In fact, the lawyers presented to the court all the evidence that the brochures were planted on the believers.\nThe evidence was falsified on October 9, 2016, during a worship service held at the Voronezh sports complex on Voroshilov Street with the participation of 650 local Jehovah's Witnesses. On that day, referring to a call received about an alleged crime, the police invaded the worship service. Law enforcement officers began to look for \"extremist materials\" in a very unusual place - in the decorative colors with which the room was decorated. What was the surprise of believers when the police \"discovered\" hidden books included in the list of extremist materials (see photo). In addition, after passively examining several rows of believers, the police chose for inspection a package belonging to a stranger, which contained a book entered into the FSEM. The man, according to eyewitnesses, hastily left the hall just before the arrival of the police. In addition, several false witnesses appeared, who stated that they were independently in the building and were handed publications from the list of extremist materials. Although these people claimed that they did not know each other, however, video camera recordings show that before the start of the service, these people communicated with each other, took pictures together and checked their watches. Finally, the witnesses, as follows from the video, to a direct question from the lawyer, clearly confirm their interest in the outcome of the operational event.\nJehovah's Witnesses do not use materials that have been deemed \"extremist\" as a result of a series of miscarriages of justice. They strongly oppose any form of extremism that is deeply alien to their biblically based beliefs and morals. Believers consider the court's decision to be a very sad event.\n","category":"org","date":"2016-12-23T11:19:30+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2016/12/79/planting-11_hu_da03f0b670ce3056.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2016/12/79/planting-11.jpg","webp":"/news/2016/12/79/planting-11_hu_b1ff814d2983439b.webp","webp2x":"/news/2016/12/79/planting-11_hu_e219efd96c17c5a2.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2016/12/79.html","regions":["voronezh"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["fabrications","plant","meetings-disruption","fsem"],"title":"The court in Voronezh turned a blind eye to the obvious facts of falsification of evidence against Jehovah's Witnesses","type":"news"},{"body":"On December 17, 2016, approximately 15 people came to the worship building of Jehovah's Witnesses on Poselkovaya Street in Sochi, led by Police Major S. A. Matsko. Police officers, as well as people in Cossack uniforms, blocked all the doors in the building.\nLaw enforcement officers insisted on the expulsion of believers from the hall, leaving only two. As a result, believers, deprived of the opportunity to control the actions of a group of operatives, were planted with a printed publication included in the Federal List of Extremist Materials.\nIn addition to the fact that this outrageous forgery was committed, the police disrupted the services of two Sochi communities of Jehovah's Witnesses. It is noteworthy that one of the \"witnesses\" who came with the police helped knock out the gate into the courtyard of the liturgical building. Six months ago, the same witnesses were seen searching the apartment of Jehovah's Witnesses.\n","category":"siloviki","date":"2016-12-19T16:16:50+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2016/12/75/planting-01_0_hu_4e3c9539bf236ac7.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2016/12/75/planting-01_0.jpg","webp":"/news/2016/12/75/planting-01_0_hu_6040977556c61772.webp","webp2x":"/news/2016/12/75/planting-01_0_hu_62d4767538f77ccd.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2016/12/75.html","regions":["krasnodar"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["meetings-disruption","plant","fabrications","fsem","vandalism"],"title":"In Sochi, Authorities Planted a Prohibited Item on Jehovah's Witnesses","type":"news"},{"body":"On December 14, 2016, in order to falsify evidence, three strangers entered a worship service of Jehovah's Witnesses in Tula. Two of them brought with them books included in the list of extremist materials.\nIn the middle of the service, police officers entered the hall. The video shows that two strangers (see photo) quickly leave the building, and prohibited books remain in their places, which the police immediately pay attention to. A third stranger (pictured right), allegedly unrelated to the other two, stays and gives the police detailed explanations, on the basis of which a protocol is drawn up, supposedly on behalf of the parishioner.\nThis is already a well-established scheme, according to which law enforcement agencies achieved a ban on several local religious organizations of Jehovah's Witnesses. Fortunately, in some cases , the courts see that the evidence against Jehovah's Witnesses is falsified and refuse to impose sanctions on believers.\nJehovah's Witnesses are outraged by the unscrupulous actions of the police and their accomplices.\n","category":"siloviki","date":"2016-12-16T14:47:25+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2016/12/74/planting-09_0_hu_f77302a4cb9453.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2016/12/74/planting-09_0.jpg","webp":"/news/2016/12/74/planting-09_0_hu_ac1e0c875880922b.webp","webp2x":"/news/2016/12/74/planting-09_0_hu_b562f038ac9db4f6.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2016/12/74.html","regions":["tula"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["meetings-disruption","plant","fsem","fabrications"],"title":"Outrageous planting of banned publications in Tula. New details","type":"news"},{"body":"On the evening of December 14, 2016, two men entered the worship building of Jehovah's Witnesses on Karl Marx Street in Tula. They planted several books on the believers included in the list of extremist materials. At the same time, about 10 law enforcement officers entered the hall, including Grigory Nikolaev, an employee of the center for countering extremism. The security forces pretended that they had accidentally discovered banned books and drew up a protocol on an administrative offense, which could ultimately threaten catastrophic consequences for the freedom of religion of local Jehovah's Witnesses.\nAs a result of the invasion, worship had to be stopped. Believers are outraged by the unscrupulous actions of the police and their accomplices.\n","category":"siloviki","date":"2016-12-15T16:07:48+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2016/12/73/planting-03_0_hu_824d80d3ea54d356.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2016/12/73/planting-03_0.jpg","webp":"/news/2016/12/73/planting-03_0_hu_bbeb57b9d3edeaeb.webp","webp2x":"/news/2016/12/73/planting-03_0_hu_4bba0a2724ddd2e.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2016/12/73.html","regions":["tula"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["meetings-disruption","plant","fabrications","fsem"],"title":"In Tula, Law Enforcement Officers Planted Banned Books on Jehovah's Witnesses","type":"news"},{"body":"Evidence has accumulated that law enforcement officers and individuals who cooperate with them systematically plant printed publications included in the Federal List of Extremist Materials (FSEM) at worship services. Why do they do this?\nBecause some officials purposefully restrict the freedom of Jehovah's Witnesses. Most often, such officials have become victims of false information about Jehovah's Witnesses. In pursuit of their goal, they do not disdain any means.\nBecause there are no real violations of the law by Jehovah's Witnesses. Jehovah's Witnesses do not use FSEM publications in their religious use and scrupulously check worship buildings for their absence. Unscrupulous authorities are forced to falsify evidence in order to find a pretext to accuse Jehovah's Witnesses.\nIn some cases, the courts, having sorted it out, make decisions that restore justice.\n","category":"faq","date":"2016-12-09T15:05:30+03:00","duration":null,"image":false,"permalink":"/en/news/about/faq/1.html","regions":[],"subtitle":null,"tags":["plant","fsem","fabrications"],"title":"Why Is Banned Literature Planted on Jehovah’s Witnesses?","type":"news"},{"body":"On September 20, 2016, masked law enforcement officers searched the worship building of Jehovah's Witnesses in the village of Nezlobnaya (Stavropol Territory). The CCTV footage clearly shows the actions of law enforcement officers.\nEarly in the morning, several cars drove up to the building, people in black masks got out of them. Jumping over the fence, they broke the lock on the gate, cut off the front door with special means and entered the building.\nThe camera footage shows that the employees were dispersed to different rooms. Several people entered the hall on the first floor and two of them, in the presence of their colleagues, took forbidden literature from under their clothes and put it in a table next to them. Later, employees allegedly withdraw forbidden literature from the exact part of the table where it was placed, while the rest of the shelves remain empty.\nAs Pavel Puzyrev, chairman of the committee of the local religious organization (LRO) of Jehovah's Witnesses, later explained, the worship building is regularly checked for the presence of foreign objects and prohibited literature. On the eve of the special operation, such a check was carried out as usual. In particular, there was nothing in that table, it was empty.\nAmong other things, law enforcement officers seized audio and video equipment. When Yevgeny Vernik, a representative of the owner and a member of the LRO committee, arrived at the worship building, law enforcement officers did not allow him to participate in the search. Wernick said: \"The senior person in charge of the search did not introduce himself, did not let me read the order. Moreover, when I asked him to provide me with a copy of the order, he rudely demanded that I leave the building. And I had to do it.\"\nAccording to lawyers, these actions were carried out in violation of the law. For example, there was no search warrant, although there were people in the building. They were not offered to open the door voluntarily, but instead immediately used special equipment. Also, law enforcement officers exceeded their official powers by removing the owner's representative from the search site.\nIn Nezlobnaya, a search was also conducted in the house of the chairman of the LRO, Pavel Puzyrev. He said: \"Some of the officers climbed over the fence, and when they came to our house, there were about 10 of them, they immediately dispersed to different rooms, which is why we could not observe the search. And, for example, the first toss was made in the kitchen. It is noteworthy that a week before these events, Puzyrev became the victim of a provocation: in educational institutions, unknown persons pasted fake leaflets on his behalf. During the search, in addition to prohibited literature, a stack of such leaflets was planted on him. As a result, a protocol on an administrative offense was drawn up against him.\nBelievers believe that the incident indicates the intention of the authorities to ban their local religious organization, which has been legally operating in the village of Nezlobnaya for 17 years.\n\"The last time searches were conducted in the homes of Jehovah's Witnesses in the village of Nezlobnaya was in 1985,\" said Pavel Puzyrev, \"At that time, every Jehovah's Witness understood that law enforcement officers could come to him at any time and seize the Bible and Bible literature. History repeats itself. Only now, in 2016, even if you don't have anything forbidden, they can just throw it at you!\"\nThe Administrative Center of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia is already aware of at least 60 plantings and falsifications. \"In most cases, believers are only forced to shrug their shoulders helplessly,\" said Sivulsky Yaroslav, a representative of the center, \"However, cases, as in Nezlobnaya, when the toss is recorded on camera, prove a very sad truth: the planting is carried out by those who themselves must protect the law and the law! It is their conscience. It is their responsibility before God and men.\"\n","category":"from-the-scene","date":"2016-09-30T08:48:48+03:00","duration":"4:35","image":{"jpg":"/news/2016/09/46/nezlopnaya_picture_for_jw-russia_hu_ed6c3febbd227ea5.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2016/09/46/nezlopnaya_picture_for_jw-russia.jpg","webp":"/news/2016/09/46/nezlopnaya_picture_for_jw-russia_hu_c1780a457b0402d6.webp","webp2x":"/news/2016/09/46/nezlopnaya_picture_for_jw-russia_hu_ffc16ba6ad5a9b18.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2016/09/46.html","regions":["stavropol"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["search","video","plant","fabrications"],"title":"Surveillance Cameras: Security Officers Plant Banned Books on Believers","type":"video"},{"body":"On September 20, 2016, during a search in the house of the chairman of the local religious organization, P. Puzyrev , and his parents, law enforcement officers planted banned books on them, as well as, unexpectedly, a stack of fake leaflets that someone had hung in educational institutions in Georgievsk a week earlier. Believers are upset by the dishonest actions of officials.\n","category":"siloviki","date":"2016-09-21T09:00:00+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2016/09/45/planting-08_0_hu_adc520b3d46421b9.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2016/09/45/planting-08_0.jpg","webp":"/news/2016/09/45/planting-08_0_hu_ee7b9128602ac06.webp","webp2x":"/news/2016/09/45/planting-08_0_hu_9303cc3de2481be1.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2016/09/45.html","regions":["stavropol"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["search","plant","fabrications"],"title":"The origin of fake leaflets in the Stavropol region was revealed","type":"news"},{"body":"On September 12, 2016, it became known that in some educational institutions in Georgievsk (Stavropol Territory), unknown persons pasted leaflets with a call to pray and take the right path, as well as with the personal phone number of the chairman of the local religious organization of Jehovah's Witnesses, which has nothing to do with the leaflets. Believers believe that the fakes are intended to incite law enforcement agencies to act against them.\n","category":"siloviki","date":"2016-09-19T14:00:00+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2016/09/43/planting-08_hu_adc520b3d46421b9.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2016/09/43/planting-08.jpg","webp":"/news/2016/09/43/planting-08_hu_ee7b9128602ac06.webp","webp2x":"/news/2016/09/43/planting-08_hu_9303cc3de2481be1.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2016/09/43.html","regions":["stavropol"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["fabrications"],"title":"Fake leaflets on behalf of Jehovah's Witnesses are distributed in educational institutions of Stavropol Territory","type":"news"},{"body":"About fifty believers in the large hall of the Supreme Court applauded the unanimous decision of the panel of judges to refuse the prosecutor's office to liquidate and recognize the local religious organization of Jehovah's Witnesses in Tyumen as extremist. Lawyers for the believers insisted that the evidence in the case was falsified. We are talking about false testimony and planting of \"extremist\" materials, which have become widespread practice.\n","category":"victory","date":"2016-04-15T14:00:00+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2016/04/13/supremecourt-02_hu_bf0ea4246d6535a3.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2016/04/13/supremecourt-02.jpg","webp":"/news/2016/04/13/supremecourt-02_hu_10aae2dc4ff51d09.webp","webp2x":"/news/2016/04/13/supremecourt-02_hu_137948a78f549282.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2016/04/13.html","regions":["tyumen"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["supreme-court","plant","mro","fabrications"],"title":"The Supreme Court of Russia refused the prosecutor's office to liquidate the Tyumen organization of Jehovah's Witnesses","type":"news"},{"body":"Evidence is being gathered that law enforcement agencies and individuals who cooperate with them systematically plant books included in the list of extremist materialsto believers . Unscrupulous authorities do everything to find a pretext to accuse Jehovah's Witnesses.\n","category":"from-the-scene","date":"2016-02-15T14:27:00+03:00","duration":"5:50","image":{"jpg":"/news/2016/02/2/image_hu_74837476bf4cc3da.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2016/02/2/image.jpg","webp":"/news/2016/02/2/image_hu_32f1834b97ae0524.webp","webp2x":"/news/2016/02/2/image_hu_f87e6ced6f00a4ab.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2016/02/2.html","regions":["crimea"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["video","fabrications","plant","fsem"],"title":"How law enforcers fabricate charges against Jehovah's Witnesses. Video footage from Sevastopol, Samara and Balakovo","type":"video"},{"body":"For the third time, the investigator \"put on the wanted list\" and then \"discovers\" Sivak and Stepanov. Both still live at their place of residence and are unaware of the actions of the investigator, who artificially prolongs the period of the preliminary investigation.\n","caseTitle":"Case of Stepanov and Sivak in Sergiyev Posad","date":"2015-04-13T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/sergiyev-posad/index.html#20150413","regions":["moscow_obl"],"tags":["fabrications"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"The investigator again \"puts on the wanted list\", and then \"discovers\" Stepanov and Sivak. Both invariably reside at their place of residence and are unaware of the actions of the investigator, who artificially prolongs the period of the preliminary investigation.\n","caseTitle":"Case of Stepanov and Sivak in Sergiyev Posad","date":"2014-12-28T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/sergiyev-posad/index.html#20141228","regions":["moscow_obl"],"tags":["fabrications"],"type":"timeline"},{"body":"The investigator \"puts on the wanted list\" and then \"discovers\" Stepanov and Sivak. Both live at their place of residence and are unaware of the actions of the investigator, who thus artificially prolongs the period of the preliminary investigation.\n","caseTitle":"Case of Stepanov and Sivak in Sergiyev Posad","date":"2014-10-08T00:00:00Z","permalink":"/en/cases/sergiyev-posad/index.html#20141008","regions":["moscow_obl"],"tags":["fabrications"],"type":"timeline"}]