The Orenburg Regional Court approved suspended sentences for Jehovah's Witnesses Vladislav Kolbanov, Vladimir Kochnev, Pavel Lekontsev, Sergei Logunov and Nikolai Zhugin. This was reported by the Jehovah's Witnesses portal.
On August 28, the Industrial District Court of Orenburg found the believers guilty under the article on participation in the activities of an extremist organization (Part 2 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code). The investigation claims that the men conducted collective religious services and educational classes from September 2017 to February 2018. The prosecutor asked to impose real imprisonment on them. Kochnev, Lekontsev and Logunov were initially charged with organizing the activities of an extremist organization (Part 1 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code), but later the charge was reclassified.
60-year-old Sergei Logunov and 47-year-old Nikolai Zhugin were sentenced to two and a half years of probation with a probationary period of two years and eight months of restriction of freedom. 42-year-old Vladimir Kochnev received a suspended sentence of two years and eight months with a probationary period of two years and two months, as well as ten months of restriction of freedom. The judge sentenced 42-year-old Pavel Lekontsev to three years probation with a probationary period of two and a half years, 30-year-old Vladislav Kolbanov - to three and a half years probation with a probationary period of three years, she sentenced both to ten months of restriction of freedom.
The prosecutor in the appeal asked to replace the suspended imprisonment with a real one, while the defense petitioned for acquittal. The Court of Appeal rejected both appeals.
A criminal case was opened against believers in May 2018. After the searches, Kochnev was arrested, and Kolbanov was placed under house arrest. Later, they and other defendants had their preventive measure softened to a ban on certain actions and an undertaking not to leave the place. In January 2020, the court returned the case to the prosecutor's office.
- 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).