JEHOVAH'S
WITNESSES:
DURING WIDESPREAD SEARCHES IN VORONEZH, TWO BELIEVERS BEATEN
WHILE BEING FORCED
TO UNBLOCK PHONES
During
widespread
arrests in Voronezh oblast of followers of the Jehovah's
Witnesses (an
organization ruled by a court to be extremist and banned in
Russia), personnel
of law enforcement agencies beat two believers. In all, on
Monday, 13 July,
searches were conducted at 110 addresses in seven settlement
areas of the
region, a record number since the prohibition of the confession
in 2017.
As
Novaia Gazeta was
told in the European Association of Jehovah's Witnesses, during
searches
security troops demanded from two victims the passwords to their
smart phones.
Thus, 30-year-old Alexander Bokov "suffered several blows about
the face,
head, and ribs," and then he was "forced to do push-ups and
squats to
exhaustion." Twenty-three-year-old Dmitry Katyrov, who came to
his home during
the searches, "was thrown to the floor and kicked in his back
and neck,
and his hands were pried open in order to unlock the telephone
with his
fingerprint."
Before
the men were
taken away for interrogation, security forces threatened them
with further
beatings if they reported the beatings to doctors. Despite this,
after the
interrogations to which several dozen believers were taken, they
recorded the
injuries they received at medical clinics. The believers did not
specify just
which agency the troops came from who beat them, but according
to official
information, the investigators from the Investigative Committee
[S.K.R.] were
aided in conducting the searches by police and troops of the
Russian Guard.
After
interrogation
in the building of the "E Center," most of the Voronezh
Jehovah's
Witnesses remained in the status of witnesses, but ten believers
were
transferred to the status of suspects in a case regarding
arranging the work of
a forbidden organization (article 282.2 of the CC). On 14 and 15
July, the
Lenin court of Voronezh sent them to a SIZO for two months, at
the request of
the S.K.R.
Representatives
of
the confession reported that one of the detainees, 44-year-old
Yury Galka, also
was knocked off his feet and forced face-down to the floor after
his door was broken
open, although they still have not managed to determine whether
he was injured
as a result. A S.K.R. press release about the arrests did not
mention the use
of force on the believers. (tr. by PDS, posted 26 July 2020)
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