Thirteen Believers, Men and Women, Will Serve Suspended Sentences. The Appeal Upheld the Decision of the Magadan Court

The verdict in the large-scale case of Magadan believers—seven men and six women aged 32 to 73 — came into force on October 15, 2024, by decision of the Magadan Regional Court. The prosecutor sought to replace suspended sentences with real ones for some of them, but the panel of judges supported the decision of the first instance.

All believers do not agree with the guilty verdict and the appeal decision, according to which they will serve suspended sentences from three to seven years. In their complaints, they drew attention to the absence of corpus delicti in their actions and stated that, according to the Constitution of the Russian Federation, they had every right to meet to discuss the Bible and communicate.

In her appeal, prosecutor Marina Shvyreva asked for tougher sentences for some believers. For example, she requested six and a half and seven years in prison for Ivan Puyda and Konstantin Petrov, respectively.

Most of the convicts noted that reading sacred texts, participating in joint worship services and in the life of the community, as well as the desire to tell others about their beliefs are generally accepted ways of expressing the faith of any Christian religion. The believers came to the conclusion that the lawful behavior of Jehovah's Witnesses was mistakenly regarded by the court as illegal actions of an extremist nature. They also noted that the court did not establish the motives of religious hatred or enmity in their actions and did not determine against which specific social group they acted.

Galina Dergacheva expressed her position on the verdict as follows: "By their actions, the state authorities present me and my fellow believers in a bad light before society, contribute to the spread of prejudice and form the impression that Jehovah's Witnesses are a dangerous and dubious sect." She added: "The state and all officials are obliged to maintain neutrality and impartiality. Therefore, they do not have the right to assess the legitimacy of religious beliefs and determine what can be believed and what not."