On March 1, the prosecution requested four years in a general regime colony for 53-year-old Jehovah's Witness from Togliatti, Elena Yurenkova. This was reported on a website covering the persecution of believers of this denomination in Russia.
The woman is also asked to be given a year of restriction of freedom after serving her sentence in prison. Until the verdict, she is under recognizance not to leave the place.
Yurenkova was searched in May 2023; she is accused of participating in the activities of an extremist organization (Part 2 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code). According to investigators, the believer participated “in collective meetings at which the ideology of the religious organization was discussed.”
- 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).