ORENBURG COURT RELEASES THREE JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES FROM HOUSE ARREST
SOVA Center for News and Analysis, 16 October 2018
A court in Orenburg mitigated the measure of restriction for three Jehovah's Witnesses, substituting a prohibition of certain activities for house arrest.
On 13 October 2018 the Lenin district court of Orenburg reviewed a petition by the investigation for an extension of house arrest for three Jehovah's Witnesses who are accused of continuing the activity of a forbidden organization—Vladislav Kolbanov, Vladimir Kochnev, and Alexander Suvorov. The petition was denied and the court changed the measure of restriction for the defendants to a prohibition of certain activities.
A case based on parts 1 and 2 of article 282.2 of the Criminal Code (planning the activity of an organization that is banned for extremism and participation in such) and part 1 of article 282.3 of the CC (financing extremist activity) was opened by the Investigation Directorate of the Investigative Committee for Orenburg oblast in May. At the time, Kolbanov was placed under house arrest and Suvorov and Kochnev were detained in custody (the measure of restriction was mitigated for them in August). In addition, a signed promise not to depart was taken by the investigation from persons arrested in Orenburg, including Pavel Lekontsev, Sergei Logunov, Aleksei Matveev, Nikolai Zhugin, Olga Sanda, and Fail Shangareev (the last two have departed from Russia). It was also reported that the accused in the case included a resident of Sol-Iletsk, Anatoly Vichkitov; Boris Andreev from the village of Perevolotsky; and a resident of Buzulk, whose name was not reported.
The accusation of Jehovah's Witnesses for planning the activity of a forbidden organization is linked with the fact that in April 2017 the Russian Supreme Court made a decision to find the Administrative Center of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia and 395 local organizations of Jehovah's Witnesses to be extremist. In July an appeal of this decision was turned down, after which, in August, the organizations were entered into the list of extremist organizations. We consider that this decision, like the prosecution of Jehovah's Witnesses on the whole, did not have legal bases and were clear manifestations of religious discrimination. (tr. by PDS, posted 16 October 2018)
Editorial disclaimer: RRN does
not intend to certify the accuracy of information
presented in articles. RRN simply intends to certify the
accuracy of the English translation of the contents of the
articles as they appeared in news media of countries of
the former USSR.
If material is quoted, please give credit to the
publication from which it came. It is not necessary to credit
this Web page. If material is transmitted electronically, please
include reference to the URL,
http://www.stetson.edu/~psteeves/relnews/.