Homes of Jehovah's Witnesses Were Searched in Izhevsk. One of Them Was Placed Under House Arrest

On December 14, 2022, in Izhevsk investigative actions were conducted at two addresses where Jehovah's Witnesses live. A criminal case has been opened against two believers, 33-year old Yevgeniy Stefanidin and 49-year old Aleksandr Votyakov.

Representatives of the Investigative Committee invaded the homes of the believers early in the morning. Electronic devices, hard drives, data storage, etc. were confiscated from them.

Lieutenant of Justice Artem Kholmogorov, a senior investigator of the Investigative Committee, charged Yevgeniy Stefanidin and Aleksandr Votyakov with organizing the activity of an extremist organization (part 1 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). According to the believers, the investigator considered it a crime to “organize and hold unlawful religious meetings . . . study articles from the book 'New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures' . . . that is, a publication that is part of the worldwide Bible educational activity carried out by Christian Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

The Stefanidins are raising a young child and Yevgeniy has a disability.

The day after the searches, on December 15, the court placed Aleksandr Votyakov under house arrest.

In Udmurtia, already five Jehovah's Witnesses, from Izhevsk and Votkinsk, are defending their innocence in court. In the summer of 2022, the ECHR issued a landmark ruling in favor of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia, which noted in particular: “Both the applicants’ religious activities and the content of their publications appear to have been peaceful in line with their professed doctrine of non-violence” (§157).