On October 5, the prosecutor in the Urai City Court (KhMAO) at a hearing in the case of Jehovah's Witness Andrei Sazonov demanded that the believer be given two fines totaling 1.3 million rubles. This is reported by the website “Jehovah's Witnesses. Legal situation in Russia".
The man is accused of organizing the activities of an extremist organization (Part 1 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code) and of financing such an organization (Part 1 of Article 282.3 of the Criminal Code). Under the first article he was asked to be fined 800 thousand rubles, under the second - 700 thousand rubles. The state prosecutor asked for the fate of the time Sazonov spent in a pre-trial detention center and under house arrest, and to reduce the total amount to 1.3 million rubles.
The next meeting, at which Sazonov will make his last word, will take place on October 17.
This is not the first time that Andrei Sazonov has been in the dock in this criminal case. On December 24, 2021, the Urai City Court found Sazonov guilty of similar charges. He was fined 500 thousand rubles, but in May 2022, the appeal court overturned this decision and sent the case for a new trial.
Sazonov was detained in January 2019. After that, he was placed in a pre-trial detention center, where he spent 20 days. After this, he was transferred to house arrest, and six months later a preventive measure was imposed in the form of a ban on certain actions. The investigation believes that he organized worship services for Jehovah's Witnesses in the city of Urai (KhMAO), and also collected money for religious activities. Several prosecution witnesses secretly audio- and video-recorded events of local Jehovah's Witnesses.
- 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).