Teens accused of burning Bibles on barbecue

In the Stavropol region, teenagers burned a Bible on a barbecue. A criminal case was opened against them for insulting the feelings of believers (Part 1 of Article 148 of the Criminal Code) and hooliganism (Part 2 of Article 213 of the Criminal Code), reports the regional department of the Investigative Committee.

According to investigators, on May 2, young people, while in the courtyard of a house in Novoaleksandrovsk, burned the New Testament because of “religious hatred.” They recorded their actions on video and posted the video on social networks, thus “offending the feelings of believers.” The Investigative Committee reported the arrest of the suspects. A preventive measure will be chosen for them in the near future. Each faces up to eight years in prison.

The Baza Telegram channel writes that security forces detained three students from the branch of the Stavropol Cooperative College in Novoaleksandrovsk: 17-year-old Yuri M., 20-year-old Danila Zh. and 21-year-old Dmitry S.

One of the young people, Danila, said during interrogation that he and his friends found the book “under some fence” during a birthday celebration and did not attach any importance to what kind of book it was. The young man also said that he saw in her “something against God and Jesus.” When asked how the video ended up on the Internet, he said he didn’t know. The mother of another detainee said that her son drank a lot that evening and does not remember what happened well.

Governor of the Stavropol Territory Vladimir Vladimirov published a video apologizing to young people. In the recording, two young men with blurred faces ask for forgiveness “from all believers whom they offended and whose feelings they hurt.” They promised to “never do this again.”

“They repent, their relatives are worried. Asking for forgiveness is important. But words cannot undo what has been done. The boys ruined the lives of themselves and their families,” the governor captioned the video.

Earlier, a court in Chechnya sentenced Nikita Zhuravel, a native of Sevastopol, to three and a half years in prison and 300 hours of compulsory labor in the case of insulting the feelings of believers. 19-year-old courier Zhuravel was detained in May 2023 in Volgograd because of a video of him burning the Koran. The young man was sent into custody in a pre-trial detention center in Grozny. There he was brutally beaten by the son of the head of Chechnya, Adam Kadyrov.

Updated at 10:37 p.m. Added information about the apology video.

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