The head of the Jehovah's Witnesses community was fined for extremist materials

On June 8, the court of the Jewish Autonomous Region considered the complaint of the chairman of the committee of the local religious organization of Jehovah's Witnesses against the decision of the Birobidzhan District Court to find him guilty of mass distribution of extremist materials (Article 20.29 of the Code of Administrative Offenses). The court left the decision unchanged, now the head of the community will have to pay a fine of 3 thousand rubles. This was reported by the information and analytical center "Sova".

Extremist materials are three books and seven brochures that were previously included in the Federal List of Extremist Materials — they were found by employees of the anti-extremism group of the regional police department and employees of the regional FSB “during verification activities at the meeting place of the local religious organization Jehovah’s Witnesses,” according to ATC website. At the same time, the head of the community himself fled from law enforcement officers, “and only a day later the employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs familiarized him with the drawn up administrative protocol,” the report says.

As Sova writes, a year ago the head of the Birobidzhan community of Jehovah's Witnesses was already brought to administrative responsibility under the same article. Then the court ordered him to pay a large fine for possession of 11 banned publications, and the prosecutor's office issued a warning to the community about the inadmissibility of carrying out extremist activities.