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The Gagarinsky District Court of Sevastopol sentenced Jehovah’s Witness Igor Schmidt to six years in a general regime colony. About it informs “Crimean Solidarity”.
Schmidt was found guilty of “organizing the activities of an extremist organization.” The state prosecution demanded seven years in prison for him.
“All the materials in the case prove exclusively my belonging to the religion of Jehovah’s Witnesses, which has not been banned in Russia by any court.” stated Schmidt during the debate.
Igor Schmidt was detained along with three other believers in October 2020. Then the FSB officers conducted searches of nine members of the Sevastopol community of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
All detainees were charged under Part 1 of Art. 282.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Organization of the activities of an extremist organization”). On October 2, 2020, Schmidt was placed in custody by the decision of the Leninsky District Court in Sevastopol, and on March 23, 2021, he was released under house arrest.
On April 20, 2017, the Russian Supreme Court ruled on recognizing the Administrative Center of Jehovah’s Witnesses as an extremist organization. Since then, hundreds of supporters of the religious organization have been prosecuted, and some of them tortured. The Memorial Human Rights Center emphasized that the court’s decision “did not cite a single fact of violation of public order by believers, manifestations of aggression or violence on their part, or evidence that their activities threatened the security of the Russian Federation”.
A comprehensive linguistic and religious forensic examination conducted earlier at the request of the prosecutor’s office stated that Jehovah’s Witnesses were using an “extremist” translation of the Bible. In addition, they allegedly consider it necessary to overthrow the constitutional order of the Russian Federation, since “they believe in the depravity of the current state of affairs, the coming end of the world, the victory of Jesus over the devil who conquered the world, the accession of Jesus and the beginning of a new world order.”
For several years of persecution, more than 500 people have been prosecuted. The oldest defendants in the extremism case were 90-year-old Rimma Vashchenko from Nevinnomyssk and 86-year-old Elena Zaishchuk from Vladivostok. Hundreds of Jehovah’s Witnesses were included in the list of extremists and terrorists of Rosfinmonitoring. Because of this, they lost the opportunity to work, receive a pension, and use bank accounts.
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