JEHOVAH'S
WITNESSES
SUBJECTED TO MASS SEARCHES IN KEMEROVO AND BELGOROD; CRIMINAL
CASES
OPENED AGAINST BELIEVERS
Portal-Credo.ru,
10
February 2018
No
fewer than 16
residences of peaceful citizens in Belgorod and 12 residences in
Kemerovo were subjected
to invasion by representatives of law enforcement agencies and
to searches.
Dozens of people were arrested and several have remained in
custody for two
days now. As the European Association of Jehovah's Witnesses
reported on 9
February, the citizens are suspected of continuing the activity
of the
organization "Administrative Center of Jehovah's Witnesses in
Russia," which was liquidated by decision of the Russian Supreme
Court on
20 April 2017, which found the aforesaid organization
"extremist."
In
the evening
of 7 February in Belgorod, large groups consisting of personnel
of the police,
the Investigation Directorate of the MVD, and armed troops of a
SOBR [Special Rapid
Response Unit]
simultaneously barged into a number of private homes of local
residents. In
some cases citizens were thrown to the floor and pinned to the
wall, and then
all were forcibly taken to the police department and searches
were conducted in
the residences. A group of deaf people also was taken to the
police department,
who had gathered for friendly communication. In all, dozens of
people were
taken to the police department at 60 Prince Trubetskoy St. At
the police
department, passport data were collected from citizens,
fingerprints were
taken, and summons were drawn up. The last of those released
left at nine in
the morning of the next day. Two citizens, Anatoly Shaliapin and
Sergei Voikov,
were held in custody for 48 hours and the issue of the selection
of measures of
prevention was decided within the context of the investigation
of a case
regarding continuation of the activity of an extremist
organization.
During
the searches,
which sometimes were conducted in a brutal form and were
accompanied by
insulting comments, from the citizens were seized Bibles, all
electronic
equipment and data storage devices, travel passports, money, and
in some cases
even photographs that were hanging on the wall. By the next day
interrogations
of citizens were begun, who appeared at the police department on
the basis of
summons. It has been learned that an investigation group,
consisting of 12
investigators of the Investigation Directorate of the MVD, was
created.
The
Kemerovo case,
which was initiated on 19 January on the basis of part 2 of
article 282.2 of
the Criminal Code of the RF, was conducted by Colonel of Justice
Oksana
Rybalkina, an investigator of the Investigative Committee of the
Russian
federation for especially important cases. She petitioned in a
court for
conducting searches in homes of citizens, arguing that,
according to her
information, no fewer than 14 local residents were continuing to
profess the
religion of the Jehovah's Witnesses. A judge of the central
district court of
the city of Kemerovo, Irina Ivanova, immediately granted in one
day at least 12
of her petitions. As a result, searches were conducted in 12
homes of peaceful
believers, which continued into the nighttime hours. In some
cases, armed
troops of the SOBR in masks opened doors by force, burst in, and
pinned
peaceful citizens with their faces to a wall and upstretched
arms or threw them
to the floor. Sometimes more than 10 persons burst into the
apartments, including
personnel of the police, Russian Guard, and Investigative
Committee. Citizens
were refused the possibility of making a telephone call or
summoning an
attorney. The refusal was accompanied by an explanation by the
senior Center
for Combating Extremism commissioner for especially important
cases, Stanislav
Shlagov: "We are not in America." Telephones, tablets,
computers,
personal effects, and data storage devices were taken from
believers. It is
reported that witnesses attending the searches were
acquaintances of the police
and actively helped them in some cases with their own prompts.
The Russian Ministry of Justice, which last year requested the liquidation of the legal entity of Jehovah's Witnesses, had insisted that the constitutional rights of individual believers would not be affected in any way in the event of the satisfaction of its lawsuit. (tr. by PDS, posted 11 February 2018)
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