COURT IN
MURMANSK
OBLAST FINES TWO JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES FOR CONDUCTING ACTIVITY OF
EXTREMIST
ORGANIZATION. THEY DID NOT ADMIT GUILT
by Igor
Cherniuk
7
x 7 Murmansk
Oblast, 24 January 2020
The
Polyarny district
court of Murmansk oblast found two Jehovah's Witnesses guilty of
continuing the
activity of a forbidden extremist organization and fined them, a
7 x 7
correspondent reported on 24 January.
According
to the
version of the prosecution, two believers—Roman Markin and
Viktor
Trofimov—carried out in the Aleksandrovsk garrison activity of
the
Administrative Center of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia, which
was banned and
liquidated by a decision of the Russian Supreme Court in 2017 as
an extremist
organization. The local Polyarny religious organization of
Jehovah's Witnesses
also was liquidated.
"Trofimov
and
Markin, while in the city of Polyarny of Murmansk oblast, acting
deliberately
and in concert with a group of persons by previous agreement,
undertook
measures of conspiracy, having informed members of a liquidated
organization beforehand
about the time and place of conducting illegal measures, they
organized and
conducted group religious liturgical actions, using the internet
network by
means of conference communication . . . , including the study of
the teaching
of Jehovah's Witnesses under the guidance of religious
literature and prayer to
the God Jehovah, and they organized the collection of financial
resources under
the guise of contributions for carrying out the activity of a
liquidated
religious organization," the court's decision states.
The
prosecutor
demanded the imprisonment of the believers for six years. The
court decided to
fine the defendants 600 and 650 thousand rubles, but reduced the
fine of Markin
to 300 thousand rubles and of Trofimov to 350 thousand rubles,
because the
defendants had been in custody and under house arrest more than
six months. The
sentence has not taken legal effect.
The
investigation
began in the spring of 2019. The suspects were under house
arrest for several
months.
Neither
Roman Markin
nor Viktor Trofimov admitted guilt, and they intend to appeal
the court's
decision. During the judicial debates they explained that they
are followers of
the religious confession of Jehovah's Witnesses, were members of
the
organization until its liquidation, and now engage in the study
of the Bible
along with like-minded persons, because they still adhere to the
religious
views of Jehovah's Witnesses.
"I did
not
commit any crime. During the announcement [of the sentence] they
talked all the
time about extremist activity. But they never identified a
single extremist
action," Jehovah's Witness Roman Markin told a 7 x 7
correspondent.
In
Markin's opinion,
the criminal case against him was opened without a basis, since
he did not
"incite hostility" and did not perform a single extremist
action, and
meetings of believers, in his opinion, cannot be forbidden,
since the Russian
constitution guarantees freedom of religious confession.
According
to the
defendants, during the investigation a representative of the
Russian Orthodox
Church and a religious studies scholar studied a video recording
of believers
and defined their actions as divine worship and not as a session
of a public organization.
In the
trial, the
believers declared that neither before nor after the liquidation
of the local
organization did the Jehovah's Witnesses in the closed district
of
Aleksandrovsk encroach upon the constitutional system of Russia
and they did not
cause harm to citizens.
This is
not the first
case when Jehovah's Witnesses in Murmansk oblast have been
subjected to
prosecution as extremists. On 20 January 2020, in Murmansk, the
Jehovah's
Witness Vitaly Omelchenko was arrested. When he and his wife one
evening exited
the lobby, four persons in civilian clothing asked him to go to
the police
department. Vitaly's spouse returned home alone. (tr. by PDS,
posted 24 January
2020)
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