The Department of the Russian Investigative Committee for the Primorsky Territory reported on the completion of the investigation into the case of Jehovah's Witnesses Boris Andreev, Natalya Sharapova and Anatoly Lee. Sova reports this.
Believers are persecuted under the article on an extremist organization (Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code). In October 2022, security forces conducted searches at 12 addresses of Jehovah’s Witnesses from the village of Yaroslavsky in Primorye. At the same time, Andreev and Sharapova were taken into custody, and a few days later Lee was sent to a pre-trial detention center.
At the end of July, 71-year-old Andreev was denied a mitigation of the preventive measure and a transfer to another pre-trial detention center, despite the need for an urgent medical examination. On August 19, the pensioner was transferred to pre-trial detention center No. 1 in Vladivostok.
- 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).