An Appeal in the City Astrakhan Upheld Prison Sentences for Four Jehovah's Witnesses, Including a Woman

On March 3, 2022, the Astrakhan Regional Court upheld the harsh sentence for Jehovah's Witnesses: 8 years in prison for Yevgeniy Ivanov, Rustam Diarov and Sergey Klikunov, and 3.5 years in prison for Ivanov's wife, Olga.

Four believers were detained and placed in a temporary detention center in June 2020 during mass searches. After that, the men were imprisoned in a pre-trial detention center. Olga Ivanova spent about a year and a half under house arrest, and then waited 4 months for an appeal decision while in a pre-trial detention center.

At the hearings in the first instance - the Trusovsky District Court of Astrakhan - dozens of defense witnesses indicated that extremism was alien to the defendants. The prosecutor, in turn, refused to question 20 prosecution witnesses, which limited the right of believers to a full and objective study of the circumstances of the case.

The prosecution strategy was reduced to proving that the defendants belonged to the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses. At the same time, as stated by the Russia’s Government, religion itself is not prohibited. In reality, the security forces do not distinguish between the constitutional right to freedom of religion and participation in the activities of an organization banned by the court. The believers insist on their innocence and intend to appeal the verdict in cassation, as well as in international instances.

Anna Safronova from Astrakhan, who had previously been involved in the case of Ivanov and others as a witness, was also sent to jail in January 2022 by a harsh court decision only for peaceful religious beliefs — she was sentenced to 6 years in prison.

The persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia causes great resonance in the legal community. The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, the ECHR, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention are just some of the organizations condemning the repression of Jehovah's Witnesses.