In Yakutia, a Judge Sentenced a Father of Two Children to Six Years’ Probation for Believing in Jehovah

On April 1, 2020, Zhanna Schmidt, judge of the Lensky District Court of the Republic of Sakha, sentenced 43-year-old Igor Ivashin to six years of suspended imprisonment for believing in Jehovah God and discussing the Bible. Ivashin called the accusations of extremism far-fetched: there is no evidence and no victims in the case.

In the past, geologist, and in recent years, locksmith Igor Ivashin, along with 22 other co-religionists, was detained on the basis of accusations of extremism in June 2018. Prior to that, employees of the Investigative Committee and the Center for Countering Extremism monitored local Jehovah's Witnesses for a year and a half and listened to Ivashin's telephone conversations.

The believer was the only defendant in this case. All his guilt was that he continued to discuss the Bible with his fellow believers, sing religious songs together and pray to God after 396 legal entities - organizations of Jehovah's Witnesses - were banned in Russia.

"The prosecution asks to convict me under the article extremism, seeing it in the fact that I sang songs, watched films with my friends and carried out religious preaching. And since the state prosecutor is well aware that these actions cannot constitute a crime in themselves, he sees my guilt in the fact that I sang not just songs, but songs of Jehovah's Witnesses. It turns out that my so-called guilt is that I am a Jehovah's Witness," Ivashin said in his last speech, calling the accusations of extremism unsubstantiated.

The judge, not heeding the arguments of the believer, issued a guilty verdict, although not as severe as the prosecutor demanded - the prosecutor Oksana Slastina requested seven years in a general regime colony. As a result, Ivashin received 6 years probation with a probationary period of three and a half years. In addition, the court banned Ivashin from holding senior positions in any public organizations for five years. He also forbade for one year without permission to leave Lensk and change his place of work without notifying the regulatory authorities.

Despite the relative leniency of the sentence, the suspended sentence with probation condemns the believer to a life of constant fear, since he can go to prison at any time if law enforcement authorities consider his individual religion "an extension of the organization's activities." Ivashin intends to appeal the verdict.

The verdict to Igor Ivashin comes against the backdrop of the European Union's demand to stop bullying Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia. Ivashin is already the 32nd Jehovah's Witness to be convicted by the Russian legal system. Eight believers are currently serving sentences in penal colonies for their beliefs, some of whom have been beaten and humiliated.