On August 7, the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic Prosecutor's Office officially apologized to Jehovah's Witness Kirill Gushchin, who was acquitted by the court, for unjustifiably bringing him to criminal responsibility. At the same time, the agency demands that the acquittal be overturned in cassation. This was reported by the portal "Jehovah's Witnesses. Legal situation in Russia".
On July 2, the Supreme Court of Kabardino-Balkaria upheld Gushchin’s acquittal, although the prosecutor’s office had filed a motion demanding that it be overturned and the case returned for a new trial.
In May, the believer was acquitted of charges of organizing the activities of an extremist organization (Part 1 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code) and involving others in such activities (Part 1.1 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code). The prosecution had requested seven years in prison.
A criminal case under the first article was opened back in May 2020, when the believer's home was searched. The man's fellow believers said that during the search, books and booklets recognized by Russian courts as extremist were planted on Gushchin. Among them was a copy of the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, a translation of the Bible made by Jehovah's Witnesses.
The second criminal case against Gushchin was opened in April 2021. According to the investigation, the Jehovah's Witness "through active actions, namely persuasion, calls for religious unity... gradually transformed his worldview... [and also] took active actions, expressed in holding religious services consisting of the sequential performance of songs... and prayers to Jehovah God."
The court considered Gushchin's case for almost three years, since June 2021. During the investigation and trial, the believer was under a written undertaking not to leave the country.
- 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."
- On June 7, 2022, the European Court of Human Rights declared the ban on Jehovah's Witnesses organizations and the subsequent persecution of believers to be unlawful. From the ECHR's point of view, the decision to liquidate the organization and the 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."