Jehovah's Witness from Simferopol became a defendant in the second criminal case

The Investigative Committee for the Republic of Crimea reported on the initiation of a second criminal case against a Jehovah's Witness from Simferopol: under the article on financing extremist activities (Part 1 of Article 282.3 of the Criminal Code). The press service of the department reports this.

Previously, a case had already been opened against the man under the article on organizing the activities of an extremist organization (Part 1 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code). We are probably talking about 53-year-old Dmitry Naukhatsky: in December he was charged under this article. The man is under house arrest.

According to investigators, the man organized “propaganda meetings” at which “forbidden literature” and methods of its distribution were studied and discussed. In addition, he collected donations from community members, security officials say.

The Investigative Committee notes that in the territory of Simferopol and the Simferopol region, security forces conducted about 20 searches, seizing religious literature, computer equipment, money and documentation.

The case against Naukhatsky became known on December 12. Then massive searches took place in Crimea - according to the community of believers, about 40 people were subjected to investigative actions, 16 of them in the Simferopol region.

• In 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. All organizations of Jehovah's Witnesses were included in the list of prohibited ones, after which a stream of criminal cases against believers began. Rosfinmonitoring has added hundreds of Russian followers of Jehovah's Witnesses to the list of extremists and terrorists. Most of the people on the list are believers between 40 and 60 years old.
• On June 7, 2022, the European Court of Human Rights declared the ban on Jehovah's Witnesses organizations and the subsequent persecution of believers 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.”