F.S.B.
AND M.V.D.
OPEN CRIMINAL CASES AGAINST JEHOVAH'S WITNESS ON SAKHALIN BASED
ON SAME ARTICLE
Za
Prava Cheloveka,
31 July 2020
Two
criminal cases on
one and the same extremism article (part 2 of article 282.2 of
the CC of
RF—participation in an extremist association) were opened
against a resident of
the city of Nevelska (Sakhalin), Viacheslav Ivanov. The website
of the
Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia reports that two law enforcement
agencies, the
F.S.B. [Federal Security Service] and the M.V.D. [Ministry of
Internal
Affairs], are trying at the same time to hold a believer
criminally
accountable.
The
first criminal
case against Ivanov was opened by the Investigation Department
of the
Department of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs for the
Nevelska city
district. On 29 August 2019, Senior Lieutenant Ilia Antonov took
over the case
for proceeding on the basis of part 2 of article 282.2 of the
Criminal Code of
the RF on the grounds that Viacheslav Ivanov "on the basis of a
previous
agreement went door to door . . . in the city of Nevelska as a
representative
of the religious organization."
The
second case was
begun by the Investigation Department of the Directorate of the
Russian F.S.B.
for Sakhalin oblast on 14 October 2019. Senior Lieutenant D.S.
Melnikov took it
over on the basis of a report of an operational agent. According
to this
document, the believer "is an active participant of a religious
association of Jehovah' Witnesses (an organization ruled to be
extremist in the
RF)" and "he drew new persons into it."
Viacheslav
Ivanov
filed an appeal in the prosecutor's office against the actions
of the agencies,
but the senior assistant prosecutor of Sakhalin oblast,
Alexander Metelsky,
turned him down inasmuch as he "did not find grounds for
combining the two
criminal cases."
By
mid-July 2020, U.F.S.B.
investigator D.S. Melnikov presented an official indictment to
Viacheslav
Ivanov. It read: Ivanov participated in criminal activity "at
the
direction of Sergei Kulakov or Evgeny Elin" and "together with
the
Kulakovs and Koslitin conducted psychological manipulation of
residents of the
city of Nevelska in order to draw them into the activity of the
organization of
Jehovah's Witnesses."
The
prosecution of
the Jehovah's Witnesses by two agencies in Russia simultaneously
is not
happening for the first time, by any means. Thus, in Khabarovsk,
Nikolai
Polevodov and Stanislav Kim are being tried for their faith in
two courts
simultaneously, and criminal cases based on the "extremism"
articles were
reopened against Venera Dulovaya, her daughter Daria, and
Alexander Prianikov
even after the issuing of a guilty verdict. (tr. by PDS, posted
1 August 2020)
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