Jehovah's Witnesses from Sergiev Posad acquitted again

On June 21, the Sergiev Posad City Court again acquitted members of the Jehovah's Witnesses organization Vyacheslav Stepanov and Andrei Sivak, who were prosecuted for inciting hatred. This was reported in a press release published on the website of Jehovah's Witnesses.

On March 4, 2016, the court already acquitted them on exonerating grounds, but on May 26, at the request of the prosecutor, the appeal court sent the case for a new trial .

The case against the elders of the Sergiev Posad community of Jehovah's Witnesses was initiated in April 2013. The case was based on hidden video footage from the service. The organization’s press release states that “operatives infiltrated the worship service, secretly filmed it and handed the recording over to a collaborating expert, mathematics teacher N. Kryukova, who ‘discovered’ signs of extremism in the words of the believers.” The investigation alleged that the accused “committed actions aimed at inciting hatred and enmity, as well as humiliating the dignity of an individual and a group of persons based on their attitude towards religion, committed publicly by an organized group.” The expert’s conclusions were later refuted by the ANO “Laboratory of Applied Linguistics”.

In April 2017, the Supreme Court declared Jehovah's Witnesses an extremist organization.