Court in Chelyabinsk Sentenced Yevgeniy Bushev to 7 Years in Prison After Just Five Hearings

On November 7, 2023, Judge Anton Yerofeyev of the Kalininskiy District Court of Chelyabinsk found Yevgeniy Bushev, one of Jehovah's Witnesses, guilty of extremism. The court considered peaceful gatherings and conversations on Bible topics to be a crime. There were only five hearings.

The case against Bushev was initiated by Aleksandr Chepenko, investigator of the Investigative Committee, who has at least 12 similar cases in the region. In September 2022, Yevgeniy's house was searched. A year after that, the case went to court, and 2 months later it reached its final stage. The prosecutor requested 6 years in a penal colony for Bushev.

According to the investigation, the believer "took deliberate, purposeful actions of an organizational nature aimed at continuing the illegal activity of a banned religious organization." However, Yevgeniy was not a member of any extremist organization, but only practiced his religion, as Jehovah's Witnesses do all over the world. This religion is also not banned in Russia.

The defense emphasizes that there is no single evidence of an extremist statement or action on the part of Bushev in the case materials. There is a linguistic expert study in the case, according to which Yevgeniy "persuaded" an agent of the special services, an employee of the National Guard, who was pretending to be interested in the Bible, to "accept the faith" of Jehovah's Witnesses. According to Bushev, the authors of the expert study took his phrases out of context and distorted their meaning. In fact, the believer only discussed with the man Bible questions that interested him.

Yevgeniy Bushev has been under house arrest since September 2022. Due to the criminal prosecution, he lost his job and his accounts were blocked.

Already 15 of Jehovah's Witnesses from the Chelyabinsk Region have been prosecuted on religious grounds.