Translated material
The cassation court approved the sentence of six convicted Jehovah's Witnesses from Saratov
On September 8, the First Cassation Court of General Jurisdiction in Saratov approved the verdict of six Jehovah's Witnesses, who were sentenced to imprisonment under the article on organizing the activities of an extremist organization (Part 1 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code). The portal “Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia” is about this.
reports Konstantin Bazhenov, Alexey Budenchuk, Gennady German, Roman Gridasov, Felix Makhammadiev and Alexey Miretsky are involved in the case. Criminal prosecution of believers began in 2018. The initiation of the case was followed by searches and arrests. Currently, everyone has already been released, but two people were subsequently deported from Russia.
On September 20, 2019, they were sentenced to terms of two to three and a half years in prison. They were also all banned from holding leadership positions in public organizations for a period of 5 years and given a one-year restriction of freedom.
sentenced After the sentence came into force, Konstantin Bazhenov was transferred to IK-3 in the Ulyanovsk region. The rest of the believers were placed in IK-1 in Orenburg, where they were beaten by colony officers in February 2020. As a result, Felix Makhammadiev required hospitalization and surgical intervention.
faced In May 2020, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Felix Makhammadiev about canceling the provision of Russian citizenship due to a guilty verdict in his criminal case. At the same time, Konstantin Bazhenov received Russian citizenship. After serving their sentences, the believers were sent to the Temporary Detention Center for Foreign Citizens and Stateless Persons (TSVSIG).
notified they deprived Makhammadiev to Uzbekistan in January 2021, and Bazhenov to Ukraine in May of the same year.
deported deported In August 2021, the last of the six convicts, Alexey Miretsky, was released.
came out - In 2017, the Supreme Court ruled that the “Administrative Center of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia” was an extremist organization, liquidated it and banned its activities in Russia. All organizations of Jehovah's Witnesses were included in the list of prohibited organizations, after which criminal cases began against believers. Rosfinmonitoring lists hundreds of Russian followers of Jehovah's Witnesses as extremists and terrorists. Most of the people on the list are believers between 40 and 60 years old. admitted the flow introduced - June 7, 2022, the European Court of Human Rights banning the organizations of Jehovah's Witnesses and the subsequent persecution of believers is illegal. From the point of view of the ECHR, the decision to liquidate the organization and criminal cases against Jehovah’s Witnesses is based on an overly broad definition of “extremism”, which in Russian legislation “can be applied to absolutely peaceful forms of expression.”