IN
YAKUTIA, JUDGE
SENTENCES FATHER OF 2 CHILDREN TO SIX-YEAR SUSPENDED SENTENCE
FOR FAITH IN
JEHOVAH
Jehovah's
Witnesses
in Russia, 1 April 2020
On 1
April, Judge
Zhanna Shmidt of the Lensk district court of the republic of
Sakha sentenced
43-year-old Igor Ivashin to a six-year suspended sentence of
imprisonment for
faith in the God Jehovah and discussion of the Bible. Ivashin
called the
accusation of extremism fanciful: there were no victims and
evidence in the
case.
The
ex-geologist, who
recently has been a locksmith, Igor Ivashin, along with another
22 fellow
believers, was arrested on the basis of charges of extremism in
June 2018.
Before that, personnel of the Investigative Committee and the
Center for
Combating Extremism, over the course of a year and a half,
tapped Ivashin's
telephone conversations and monitored local Jehovah's Witnesses.
The
believer became
the only defendant in this case. His entire guilt consisted of
his continuing
to discuss the Bible with fellow believers and to sing religious
songs and pray
to God in a group after 396 legal entities, organizations of
Jehovah's
Witnesses, had been banned in Russia.
"The
prosecution
side requested to convict me on the basis of the article on
extremism, finding
it in the fact that I sang songs, viewed films with my friends,
and conducted
religious proclamation. And since the state's prosecutor
understood very well
that these actions in and of themselves cannot be a crime, then
she found my
guilt in the fact that I not simply sang songs, but songs of the
Jehovah's
Witnesses. It turns out that my so-called guilt consists in the
fact that I am
a Jehovah's Witness," Ivashin declared in his final statement,
calling the
accusations of extremism unproven.
The
judge, not paying
attention to the arguments, issued a guilty verdict, although
the sentence was
not as severe as the prosecutor had demanded. Prosecutor Oksana
Slastina asked
for seven years in a penal colony of general regime. In the end,
Ivashin
received a six-year suspended sentence with a probationary
period of three and
a half years. In addition the court forbade Ivashin, over five
years, to occupy
a leadership office in any public organizations. It also forbade
him to travel
outside the limits of Lensk for a year, without permission, or
to change his
place of work, without informing the supervisory bodies.
Despite
the relative
leniency of the sentence, the conditional sentence with a
probation term dooms
the believer to a life in constant fear, since he can be put in
prison at any
time if law enforcement agencies consider his individual
religious confession
to be "continuation of the activity of the organization."
Ivashin
intends to appeal the verdict.
The
verdict on Igor
Ivashin was issued against the backdrop of the demand by the
European Union to
put an end to bullying Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia. Ivashin is
now the 32nd
Jehovah's Witness for whom the Russian legal system has issued a
guilty
verdict. At present, eight believers are already serving time in
penal colonies
for their convictions and several have endured beatings and
humiliation. (tr.
by PDS, posted 1 April 2020)
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