On March 20, employees of the Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee for the Yaroslavl Region dropped the criminal case against Jehovah's Witnesses from Rybinsk Olga Golovacheva, Evgenia Samoilova, Mikhail Ovchinnikov and Dmitry Lebedev. This was reported by a portal covering the persecution of believers.
The believers became defendants in a criminal case in the summer of 2022, when mass searches were conducted in Rybinsk. All of them were charged with participation in the activities of an extremist organization (Part 2 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code).
In March of this year, regional Investigative Committee officers acknowledged that there were no signs of a crime in the case and stopped persecuting believers.
- In 2017, the Supreme Court declared the "Administrative Center of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia" an "extremist organization," liquidated it, and banned its activities in Russia. All Jehovah's Witnesses organizations were added to the list of banned organizations, after which a stream of criminal cases against believers began . Rosfinmonitoring 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 the ages of 40 and 60.
- In October 2021, the Plenum of the Supreme Court clarified the application of the "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 practice of religion, worship or other religious rites and ceremonies, do not in themselves constitute a crime under Part 2 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code (Participation in the activities of an extremist organization - OVD-Info )." According to lawyer Tatyana Glushkova, these changes allow courts to terminate criminal cases brought against former members of liquidated religious organizations (for example, Jehovah's Witnesses).