On April 25, the Chelyabinsk Regional Court reduced the sentence of Jehovah's Witness Evgeniy Bushev from seven to six years in prison. This was reported by the Jehovah's Witnesses portal.
The Kalininsky District Court of Chelyabinsk in November 2023 found the believer guilty under the article on participation in an extremist organization (Part 1 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code). According to investigators, Bushev “took deliberate active actions of an organizational nature aimed at continuing the illegal activities of a banned religious organization.”
The prosecutor asked that the believer be sentenced to six years in prison. In the appeal, the defense noted that there were no specific “extremist” actions in the accusation, that the religion of Jehovah’s Witnesses itself is not prohibited, and that there was no evidence that the believer’s actions incited hatred or enmity.
The case against Evgeniy Bushev was opened in August 2022, and in September his home was searched. From the day of the search, the believer was under recognizance not to leave. After the verdict was announced, he was placed in pre-trial detention center No. 1 in Chelyabinsk. Due to criminal prosecution, the man lost his job and his accounts were blocked.
Initially, Bushev was charged with participation in the activities of an extremist organization (Part 2 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code), but later, apparently, they were reclassified as organizing such activities (Part 1 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code), since the case file on the court’s website indicates this particular part of the article . The maximum term of imprisonment under Part 2 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code is six years.
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).