Court Sends Dmitry Terebilov Back to Maximum Security Prison for His Religious Beliefs

Five years and 5 days in a strict regime colony - this is the second conviction that the Sverdlovsk District Court of Kostroma passed on Dmitriy Terebilov at a hearing on January 23, 2024. Judge Dmitriy Gorokhov recognized the conversations about the Bible as the involvement of convicts in the activities of an extremist organization.

In the fall of 2021, the believer was sentenced to three years in a strict regime colony for practicing the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses. Terebilov served his sentence in full, but was not released — in the spring of 2023, another criminal case was opened against him under an extremist article. The testimony of a cellmate who feigned an interest in the Bible, which formed the basis of the accusation, boiled down to the fact that the believer answered the man's questions about his religious beliefs.

The investigation also used letters that Terebilov received while in the colony, as well as entries from his personal diary, as evidence of his guilt. At one of the hearings, the colony's censor noted that in these letters "there were no calls to incite hatred and enmity, there were no insults." It is noteworthy that even before studying the Bible, while serving the fourth term, Terebilov received a letter from Jehovah's Witnesses, and, according to him, this radically changed his life. "From an unworthy criminal, I turned to a God-fearing person and a useful member of society," Dmitry said.

In his last word, Terebilov asked: "I cannot understand what evil I have committed and to whom? How do I know what I can and can't do? The authorities say that my religion is not banned, I can practice it if there is no extremism in my actions, and there never has been. And law enforcement officers believe that everything I do as one of Jehovah's Witnesses is already a crime."