Court of Cassation Upheld the Sentence of Three Jehovah's Witnesses From Lipetsk. A Year Ago, They Were Fined for Their Beliefs

On February 16, 2023, the First Cassation Court of General Jurisdiction in Saratov upheld the fines imposed on Artur Netreba, Viktor Bachurin and Alexandr Kostrov for their faith in God. Each of them paid 300 thousand rubles.

Thus, the court of cassation agreed with the decisions of the courts of first and appeal instances, which found the men guilty of extremism only for participating in religious services and “preaching the teachings of Jehovah's Witnesses.”

In their appeals, the believers noted that “peaceful conversation about God with fellow believers or with other people without calls for violence, discrimination and degrading treatment of any social group, cannot pose a danger to the public. Circumstances indicating that the residents of Lipetsk needed increased protection after [conducting religious services with the participation of the defendants or their conversations about religious beliefs] have not been established.”

The European Court in its decision explicitly stated that “by seeking to suppress the religious activity of Jehovah's Witnesses, the Russian authorities failed to act in good faith and breached the state's duty of neutrality and impartiality vis-a-vis the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses” (§ 254).