The Court of Appeal practically did not change the sentences of Jehovah's Witnesses from Birobidzhan

On June 1, the Court of the Jewish Autonomous Region approved the sentences of local Jehovah's Witnesses, slightly reducing the prison terms of two of them. This is reported by a portal covering the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia.

The appeal court reduced the sentences of believers Sergei Shulyarenko and Valery Kriger by only three months, and now they will spend six years and nine months in prison, instead of seven years. Jehovah's Witnesses Alam Aliyev and Dmitry Zagulin, sentenced to 6.5 and 3.5 years in prison, had their sentences left unchanged.

During the trial, the believers insisted on their innocence, noting that they were being persecuted only for exercising the constitutional right to freedom of conscience and religion.

Four Jehovah's Witnesses were sentenced to actual terms at the end of December 2022. The Birobidzhan District Court found them guilty of organizing the activities of an extremist organization (Part 1 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code) and financing extremist activities (Part 1 of Article 282.3 of the Criminal Code). According to investigators, they organized religious meetings of Jehovah's Witnesses in Birobidzhan, knowing that the organization was prohibited. Krieger, Shulyarenko and Zagulin were also charged with making donations to the community in the amount of more than 401 thousand rubles.

The case against four believers was opened in May 2018. FSB officers conducted Operation Judgment Day, during which searches were carried out in 20 families of Jehovah's Witnesses. Krieger, Shulyarenko, Aliyev and Zagulin were under recognizance not to leave.

• 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.
• In October 2021, the Plenum of the Supreme Court clarified the application of “anti-extremist” legislation. The document, in particular, states that actions “consisting solely of the exercise of the right to freedom of conscience and freedom of religion, including through individual or joint professing of religion, performing divine services or other religious rites and ceremonies, do not in themselves constitute a crime , provided for in Part 2 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code (Participation in the activities of an extremist organization - OVD-Info ).” According to OVD-Info lawyer Tatyana Glushkova, these changes allow courts to terminate criminal cases brought against former members of liquidated religious organizations (for example, Jehovah's Witnesses).