Two Jehovah's Witnesses died in Smolensk and Kirov while under investigation

In Smolensk, 61-year-old Jehovah's Witness Viktor Malkov died, whose health deteriorated during 8 months in a pre-trial detention center. The website “Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia” reports this.

The case of organizing the activities of an extremist organization (Part 1 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code) was opened in April 2019. According to investigators, Malkov “organized and conducted a joint prayer to Jehovah, demonstrated videos... informing adherents on issues of participation in congresses... on issues of organizing and conducting subsequent joint meetings.” The court sent him into custody, and he spent 8 months in pre-trial detention center No. 1 in the Smolensk region.

A week after his arrest, Malkov wrote: “Chronic diseases, coronary heart disease, vascular disease, and kidney problems have worsened. I am not receiving proper treatment, even though I have consulted a doctor several times. There is no medicine here that I need." A lawyer who visited him in the pre-trial detention center at the end of 2019 said: “He experienced pain in the heart area, and other diseases began to progress. In all the cells where he was kept, he sat with smokers; for some time there were 24 people in the cell, 23 of them smoked.”

In December, Malkov was transferred to house arrest. However, he could visit the clinic only with the permission of the investigative and supervisory authorities. When Malkov stated that he had the investigator’s permission to leave the house, the inspector (an employee of the criminal-executive inspection who monitors compliance with house arrest) said that she did not have this information, and Malkov could not bring her the investigator’s permission, since he would violate the regime.

On April 24, a week before the trial, 64-year-old Jehovah's Witness Yuri Geraskov from the Kirov region died after a long illness. A criminal case was opened last summer under articles on organizing the activities of an extremist organization (Part 1 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code), participation in it (Part 2 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code) and its financing (Part 1 of Article 282.3 of the Criminal Code), and the first The search of Geraskov took place in the fall of 2018. He was under recognizance not to leave the place, but the stress from the searches and interrogations had a negative impact on the believer’s well-being, reports the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia website.

According to investigators, Geraskov and 6 other defendants in the case “organized meetings of followers and participants of the specified association [Jehovah’s Witnesses] in various apartments in compliance with actions characteristic of this association, expressed in joint singing of Bible songs, improving skills in carrying out missionary activities, studying religious literature, the so-called “Holy Scripture” (Bible), included in the Federal list of extremist materials containing the creed of Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

• On April 20, 2017, the Supreme Court recognized the “Administrative Center of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia” as an extremist organization, liquidated it and banned its activities in Russia. In August, all organizations of Jehovah's Witnesses were added to the list of prohibited organizations. After this, a stream of criminal cases against representatives of the confession began. In February 2019, the court handed down its first sentence with real imprisonment - Danish citizen Dennis Christensen was sentenced to six years in prison.