In Primorye, two Jehovah's Witnesses were sent to a pre-trial detention center after searches

In the village of Yaroslavsky, Primorsky Territory, on October 6, searches were carried out at 12 addresses of Jehovah's Witnesses, after which two believers were sent into custody. The website “Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia” is about this.

reports 70-year-old Boris Andreev and 49-year-old Natalya Sharapova were placed in a pre-trial detention center for 22 days. According to a website covering the persecution of believers, according to preliminary information, Andreev is suspected of organizing the activities of a banned organization (Part 1 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code), and Sharapova is suspected of involvement in the activities of an extremist organization (Part 1.1 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code).

Several more believers were interrogated after the searches, and some had their phones confiscated.

• In 2017, the Supreme Court liquidated the “Administrative Center of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia” extremist organization 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 introduced flow the - 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.” admitted