COURT IN BIROBIDZHAN SENTENCES JEHOVAH'S WITNESS TO SUSPENDED TERM
Memorial Human Rights Center, 3 February 2021
Thirty-five-year-old Artur Lokhvitsky was given a 2.5-year suspended prison sentence on the basis of the article about participating in the activity of an extremist organization.
On 2 February, Judge Olga Kliuchikova of the Birobidzhan district court of the Jewish autonomous oblast sentenced a local Jehovah's Witness, Artur Lokhvitsky, to a suspended prison term. This has been reported by Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia.
The believer was given a suspended two years and six months imprisonment with a three-year probationary period and the requirement to report to the police once a month.
The prosecution had requested for Lokhvitsky four years imprisonment to be served in a penal colony of ordinary regime.
The criminal case on the basis of the article about participation in the activity of an extremist organization (part 2 of article 282.2 of the CCRF) against the believer was opened on 31 July 2019. According to the account of the investigation, "for the purposes of spreading the religious teachings of the Jehovah's Witnesses by means of improving the skills of the preaching ministry and other religious activity, [Lokhvitsky] conducted studies . . . of the Jehovah's Witnesses' edition of 'Sacred Scripture—New World Translation,' which has been ruled to be extremist."
In late January 2021, another two believers from the Jewish autonomous oblast were sentenced to suspended prison terms: 45-year-old Evgeny Golik from Birobidzhan was given a suspended prison term of 2.5 years and 43-year-old Anastasia Sycheva from Obluche, a suspended term of 2 years. [. . . ] (tr. by PDS, posted 4 February 20210
Related article:
Nineteen
Jehovah's Witnesses on trial in Birobidzhan region
January 21, 2021
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