TOMSK
JEHOVAH'S
WITNESS LEFT IN PENAL COLONY FOR SIX YEARS
The
Tomsk oblast
court left in force the verdict on Jehovah's Witness Sergei
Klimov. The defense
will file an appeal in the European Court of Human Rights.
The
oblast court did
not satisfy Klimov's appeal against the sentence of the October
district court
of Tomsk, the lawyer Artur Leontiev told Taiga.Info on 20
February.
"After
receiving
the reasoned judicial act, an appeal will be filed in the
E.C.H.R. and the
question of a higher [cassation] appeal will be resolved,"
Leontiev
explained.
In the
appeal of the
defense, attention was called to the fact that the court of the
first instance
needed only 1 or 2 hours in order to resolve in the conference
room all
questions of the criminal case and also to print the sentence on
17 pages.
In
addition, there
was no expert conclusion of a specialist in the area of
religious studies. Such
a document had been prepared by a former deputy head of the
department of
sociological analysis of the administrative apparatus of the
Federation
Council, Sergei Ivanenko, who defended his doctoral dissertation
on the topic
of the evolution of the ideology of Jehovah's Witnesses in the
years 2006 to
2018. He pointed out that Klimov, who identifies himself with
this confession,
does not associate himself with any specific legal entity, the
lawyer on the
appeal stated in his explanations.
"As the
religious studies analysis in the materials presented shows, in
order to
identify with his chosen religious confession, Klimov did not
need to create or
revive any kind of organization provided for by existing
legislation of the
Russian Federation," the lawyer noted.
In
November 2019, the
October district court of Tomsk found Sergei Klimov guilty under
part 1 of
article 282 of the Criminal Code (organizing the activity of a
religious
association that has been liquidated by a court because of the
conduct of
extremist activity). Judge Dmitry Borisov sentenced him to six
years in a penal
colony of general regime; the state prosecution had asked for
seven years.
In 2017,
the Russian
Supreme Court banned the Administrative Center of Jehovah's
Witnesses in Russia
and its regional affiliates, finding them to be extremist. The
court decided
that Klimov "was the effective leader" of the local "Northern
Tomsk" organization, one of the subdivisions of the
Administrative Center
of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia forbidden by the Supreme Court.
He allegedly
assembled believers in the home of one of the members of the
congregation and
conducted services there. The charges were built on the
testimony of a secret
witness, who refused in court to answer most questions of the
defense.
Klimov
"undermined the foundations of the constitutional order and
security of
the state, leading to the creation of socially harmful
consequences in the form
of the violation of the rights, liberties, and legal interests
of man and
citizen, as the result of the incitement of religious strife and
the promotion
of exclusivity and of the superiority of a person on the basis
of his religious
affiliation and attitude toward religion," the decision of the
court says.
(tr. by PDS, posted 20 February 2020)
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