Translated material
SK: In the closed city of the Tomsk region, the “alleged organizer” of Jehovah's Witnesses was detained
The Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee for the Tomsk Region reports the initiation of a criminal case under the article on the organization of the activities of an extremist organization (part 1 of article 282.2 of the Criminal Code) in the closed city of Seversk and the detention of the “alleged organizer” of the organization of Jehovah's Witnesses.
According to the SK, “from July 2017 to July 2020 in the city of Seversk, the Tomsk Region, a group of persons organized the activities of the local religious organization of Jehovah's Witnesses of Seversk, knowingly knowing about the ban on its activities in accordance with the decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation”. Jehovah's witnesses allegedly held “closed conspiratorial meetings”, distributed “extremist literature” and organized “work on recruiting and involving new participants from among the inhabitants of the city of Seversk”.
The investigative group included 5 investigators and a criminal investigator.
The publication Taiga.info notes that before the liquidation in 2017 of the Seversky organization of Jehovah's Witnesses, Alexei Ershov was listed as its chairman.
20:00 there were details of searches and interrogations of Jehovah's Witnesses in the closed city of Seversk, the website of “Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia” reports . Searches for five addresses were carried out at about 9 a.m. on July 14 by the forces of employees of the SK and the FSB. During the searches, electronic devices, various Bible translations, notebooks, Wi-Fi-Routers, video cameras, photographs, postcards, banking cards, passports and even Tom Gyugo and Leo Tolstoy were seized from believers. After searches, 10 people were taken for interrogation in the UK in Tomsk.
One believer, 50-year-old Evgeny Korotun, was sent to the insulator, and the next day he was appointed a preventive measure in the form of house arrest.
- In November 2019, the court in Tomsk sentenced the witness of Jehovah Sergey Klimov to six years of a general regime colony on charges of organizing the activities of an extremist organization (part 1 of article 282.2 of the Criminal Code). On June 3, 2018, searches and interrogations of the participants of Jehovah's Witnesses were held in Tomsk. During the searches, the security forces seized equipment, the Bible, personal entries, photos, money and bank cards. Klimov was detained, and then for two months they kept in a pre-trial detention center in a single chamber with a size of 1.7 × 2.8 m-supposedly because of the impossibility of finding a place in a regular chamber.
- In April 2017, the Supreme Court recognized the “Management Center of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia” with an extremist organization and banned its activities throughout the country. In August 2017, all Jehovah's communities were included in the list of prohibited. OVD-Info talked about the life of Jehovah's Witnesses in the conditions of the ban and how they are persecuted.