On September 15, the Kovrov City Court sentenced Jehovah's Witness Alexei Kupriyanov to a year in prison and six months of limited freedom. This was reported by the portal “Jehovah's Witnesses: Legal situation in Russia.”
The term of imprisonment to which Kupriyanov was sentenced is considered to have been served due to the time that the believer spent in a pre-trial detention center and under house arrest.
against the man and another believer, Roman Adestov, A criminal case was opened in July 2021. Then they were accused of participation in the activities of an extremist organization (Part 2 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code) and sent to a pre-trial detention center.
In custody, Kupriyanov faced torture and ill-treatment at the hands of the FSIN officers: in particular, he was forced to sit on the cold floor for several hours. The man's health deteriorated and he required surgery. In November of the same year, the believer was transferred to house arrest.
In the fall of 2022, the case went to court. “The accusation is based only on the fact that I am a believer,” Kupriyanov himself commented on his persecution.
- Roman Adestov was sentenced to a year in prison in June of this year. His sentence was also considered served due to the time spent in the pre-trial detention center.
- 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.”
- 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).