9 Jehovah’s Witnesses convicted of extremism for practicing faith in Russia

[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nn(RNS) — Nine Jehovah’s Witnesses were convicted of extremism by a Russian court on Tuesday (March 5), receiving sentences of up to seven years in a penal colony for practicing their faith. Of those convicted, eight had already served more than two years in pretrial detention, often in solitary confinement, according to a spokesperson for the Jehovah’s Witnesses. They plan to appeal the decision.“Either I am one of Jehovah’s Witnesses or I am an extremist. It is impossible to be both at the same time,” Aleksey Solnechny said in Russian at court on Jan. 24, where he received a seven-year sentence. “And I declare: I am one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, but I am not an extremist!”
In the fall of 2021, Russian officers raided more than a dozen Jehovah’s Witnesses’ homes in Irkutsk and the Irkutsk region, subjecting two families — Anatoly and Greta Razdobarov and Nikolay and Liliya Merinov — to beatings and torture. The two men were later called to be witnesses in the cases against their Jehovah’s Witness peers.
The officers suspected the Jehovah’s Witnesses of violating the Russian Federation’s ban on organizing the activities of an extremist group. In 2017, the Russian Federation’s Supreme Court banned the Witnesses’ activities and liquidated their legal entities. Since then, almost 800 Jehova …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]