The court extended the arrest of employees of the Church of Scientology in St. Petersburg

The St. Petersburg City Court extended the term of arrest for employees of the Church of Scientology of St. Petersburg. This was reported by the SOVA Information and Analytical Center.

Until October 19, 2018, Ivan Matsitsky and Sahib Aliyev will remain in pre-trial detention center, and Anastasia Terentyeva and Konstantia Esaulkova are under house arrest. They are accused under points “a”, “b” of Part 2 of Article 171 of the Criminal Code (illegal business committed by an organized group with the extraction of income on an especially large scale), Part 2 of Article 282 of the Criminal Code (incitement of hatred or enmity committed by an organized group) and Part 1 and 2 articles 282.1 of the Criminal Code (organization of an extremist community and participation in it).

The court motivated its decision by the need to familiarize itself with the case materials, which amounted to 70 volumes. Lawyers for the accused intend to appeal the extension of the arrest.

“The investigator delayed the investigation. And it is his fault, not the accused. Therefore, the law stipulates that extending the period of detention for more than a year is possible only in one case - when the accused must be familiarized with the case materials. There can be no other grounds for extending the arrest. Matsitsky and Aliyev stated at the trial that they no longer want to get acquainted with the case materials, that is, they no longer need it, and, accordingly, there are no grounds to keep them in custody. But the court did not take into account their statements and did not even reflect them in the decision,” SOVA quotes the lawyers as saying.

The head of the community, Ivan Matsitsky, the chief accountant, Sahib Aliyev, the executive director, Galina Shurinova, the head of the internal security service, Anastasia Terentyeva, and the organization’s lawyer, Konstantia Esaulkova, were arrested in June 2017. The Memorial Human Rights Center recognized all the defendants as political prisoners.

As part of the same criminal case, searches were carried out in March at the office of the Church of Scientology in St. Petersburg. Nine parishioners of the church were taken away for questioning by the FSB.