2 years and 2 months of forced labor and 6 months of restricted freedom for reading the Bible. Valery Moskalenko at large, but with a guilty verdict

Two years and two months of forced labor and another six months of restriction of freedom - this is the sentence handed down to Valery Moskalenko by the Zheleznodorozhny District Court of Khabarovsk on September 2, 2019. At the same time, the court did not support the petition for a prison term for a peaceful believer convicted of reading the Bible.

On the morning of September 2, 2019, Judge Ivan Belykh announced the verdict, in which he only partially supported the position of the prosecutor's office. The prosecutor called for the believer to be sent to jail for three years under Part 2 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (participation in extremist activities). The key episode for the prosecution was the events that took place on April 21, 2018 in the conference hall of the Yerofey hotel complex. There, Moskalenko quoted the words of Jesus Christ from the Sermon on the Mount. A ten-minute audio recording of the reading of this passage with commentary formed the basis of the indictment.

After the verdict was announced, 52-year-old Valery Moskalenko was released from custody in the courtroom to the delight of his family and friends. He has been in jail for more than a year, since August 2, 2018. Before being taken into custody, he worked as an assistant locomotive driver and cared for his sick mother. Under the terms of restriction of freedom, he cannot travel outside Khabarovsk and must report to the penitentiary inspectorate once a month.

The believer's defense believes that a guilty verdict for believing in God and quoting the words of Jesus Christ cannot be considered legitimate, so it intends to appeal the verdict.

In addition to Valery Moskalenko, 7 more believers in the Khabarovsk Territory are awaiting sentences for similar "crimes". In this Russian region, as in many others, law enforcement officers deny citizens the right to practice the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses, which contradicts not only Article 28 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, but also the position of the Government and the President of the Russian Federation.