Court of Cassation in Pyatigorsk Upheld the Sentence of Three Jehovah's Witnesses for Their Faith

On March 1, 2023, the Fifth Court of Cassation of General Jurisdiction in Pyatigorsk confirmed the verdict against Konstantin Samsonov, Aleksandr Akopov and Shamil Sultanov for their faith, as final.

By the decision of the court of first instance, Samsonov should have gone to a penal colony for 7.5 years. The court imposed fines on Akopov and Sultanov, which were cleared on account of the time served in the pre-trial detention center. The court of appeal made significant changes to the verdict: Samsonov's prison term was replaced with a fine, and the amount of the fines imposed on the rest was increased.

In the cassation ruling, the prosecutor's office stated that it considers such a punishment for practising their religion to be "unjustifiably lenient" and insists on the need to "isolate [the believers] from society". Based on this, the public prosecutor requested to send the case for a new trial to the court of first instance.

Three residents of Neftekumsk were convicted as extremists for gathering at home with friends to read and discuss the Bible, sing religious songs and pray. As the believers noted in the cassation appeal, their “actions and statements were of an exclusively peaceful nature... their motive was not extremism, but the intention to exercise the right to profess and spread the beliefs in the ways characteristic of Jehovah's Witnesses”.

Contrary to the explanations of the Plenum of the Supreme Court and the position of the ECHR, according to which “the State's duty of neutrality and impartiality prohibits it from assessing the legitimacy of religious beliefs or the ways in which those beliefs are expressed or manifested” (§ 119), the investigation and courts continue to prosecute Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia.