ANDREI
SAZONOV
RELEASED FROM HOUSE ARREST
Court
decided that
the model father of a family may be at liberty
Jehovah's
Witnesses
in Russia, 26 August 2019
On 22
August 2019,
an appeals court of Khanty-Mansi changed the measure of
restriction for Andrei
Sazonov from house arrest to prohibition of certain activities.
Judge Natalia
Pashaeva ruled that "the decision of the court of first instance
was not
based on objective information and violates articles of the Code
of Criminal
Procedure of the RF."
Now the
believer is
forbidden to communicate with "persons who have something to do
with the
criminal case," or to send and receive correspondence, or to use
the
internet. Meanwhile the case against Andrei Sazonov, which was
opened on 31
January 2019, continues to be investigated. As before, he faces
up to ten years
incarceration for faith in God based simultaneously on two parts
of article
282.2 (parts 1 and 2) of the Criminal Code of the RF.
Earlier
an assistant
chief of the investigation department of the Investigative
Committee of Russia
(SKR) for the KhMAO, M. Kartoev, whose purview the criminal case
is in, sent to
the court a petition for extending the term of house arrest of
Andrei Sazanov
until 30 September 2019. However Judge Pashaeva came to the
conclusion that the
decision of the court of the first instance for extending the
measure of
restriction of house arrest had not been based on objective
information and
simultaneously violates several articles of the criminal
procedure code. In
particular, there is no evidence that Andrei Sazonov interfered
with the
investigation or plans to do so in the future. In addition, the
court of the
first instance did not take into account the condition of the
health of the
defendant, who needs an operation. She called attention to the
positive accounts
of the defendant's character, his social adaptability, and the
existence of his
own housing and family.
Andrei
Sazonov has
experienced all facets of a criminal prosecution. Earlier he
spent 20 days in a
SIZO and 178 days under house arrest with a leg bracelet and now
he is deprived
of the possibility of communicating freely. All of this is
happening because of
the fact that the authorities consider that the peaceful
profession of religion
is "extremist activity." Andrei is an engineer by occupation, he
is
married, and he is raising a son and daughter.
At the
present time,
in the Khanty-Mansi autonomous oblast, 22 believers are subjects
of criminal
cases based on religious confession. Meanwhile the government of
Russia has
affirmed that decisions of Russian courts for liquidation and
prohibition of their
organization "do not give an assessment of the religious
teaching of
Jehovah's Witnesses and do not contain restriction or
prohibition of confessing
said teaching individually." Jehovah's Witnesses have nothing to
do with
extremism. (tr. by PDS, posted 26 August 2019)
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