On August 13, 2024, the Sixth Cassation Court in Samara upheld the sentence of Jehovah's Witnesses from Kazan Andrei and Leysan Bochkarev, as well as fellow believer Tatyana Obizhestvit. This was reported by the portal "Jehovah's Witnesses. Legal situation in Russia".
In their appeal, the believers pointed out that the guilty verdict was based on assumptions, not evidence, that they had committed any extremist actions or made statements inciting hatred.
In February last year, the Vakhitovsky District Court of Kazan sentenced believer Andrei Bochkarev to three years in a maximum security penal colony, but immediately released him, counting the time he spent in pretrial detention. His wife Leysan Bochkareva was given a suspended sentence of two and a half years. And Tatyana Obizhestvit was given a suspended sentence of two years. The prosecutor had requested seven years of imprisonment for the believers. All three Jehovah's Witnesses were found guilty under the article on organizing the activities of an extremist organization (Part 1 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code). In November, the Supreme Court of Tatarstan upheld this decision on appeal.
The case was opened on December 27, 2019. Leysan and Andrey Bochkarev were detained in January 2020. At that time, searches were conducted in several apartments, and about 15 believers were interrogated. The Bochkarevs' computer was confiscated. According to the security forces, they were looking for weapons, drugs, and "everything related to Jehovah." During interrogations, the believers were asked who was "forcing" them to read the Bible and discuss spiritual topics with each other. Leysan Bochkarev and another defendant in the case, Tatyana Obizhestvit, were placed under house arrest as part of the same criminal case.
- 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 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 aged 40 to 60.
- 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."
- 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).