Convictions of sixteen Jehovah's Witnesses upheld

On March 17, the Rostov Regional Court upheld the conviction of the Taganrog City Court against sixteen members of the Jehovah's Witnesses community. This is reported by the website of the Information and Analytical Center "Sova". All of them were found guilty of organizing the activities of an extremist organization, four of them were also found guilty of involving minors in the commission of a crime.

Aleksey Koptev was sentenced to five years and three months probation, Yuri Baklushin, Alexander Skvortsov and Nikolai Trotsyuk - to five and a half years probation, and in addition all four - to a fine of one hundred thousand rubles, from which they were released due to the expiration of limitation period. All the rest were sentenced to fines ranging from 60,000 to 70,000 rubles (only one was fined 20,000 rubles) and were also released from payments. For those who had previously been sentenced to fines alone, the amount of fines this time turned out to be higher than last time.

This case has already been considered by the Taganrog City Court, and at the end of July 2014, Baklushin, Skvortsov, Koptev and Trotsyuk at the end of July 2014 were sentenced to suspended sentences from five to five and a half years and fines of one hundred thousand rubles, three more members of the community - Sergey Trotsyuk, Karen Minasyan and Andrey Goncharov - to fines from 50 to 60 thousand. All were released from paying fines due to the expiration of the statute of limitations. The remaining nine defendants were acquitted. In December, the court of appeal overturned the decision of the Taganrog court and sent the case back for a new trial, as a result of which there were no more acquittals.