Nine of Jehovah's Witnesses from Irkutsk Received 3 to 7 Years in a Penal Colony for Their Faith

On March 5, 2024, Andrey Slavinskiy, judge of the Oktyabrskiy District Court of Irkutsk, issued a verdict in the case of 9 Jehovah's Witnesses. He found them guilty of extremism and sentenced them to various terms of imprisonment in a penal colony.

The maximum term — 7 years — were received by Yaroslav Kalin, Sergey Kosteyev, Nikolay Martynov, Mikhail Moysh, Aleksey Solnechny and Andrey Tolmachev. Igor Popov and Denis Sarazhakov received 6 years and 4 months, and Sergey Vasilyev received 3 years. The verdict has not entered into force; the believers do not admit their guilt and plan to appeal.

A criminal case was initiated in October 2021, when searches were carried out in the homes of the believers. Law enforcement officers behaved rudely: they broke windows and entered through windows and balcony doors. Some of the raids were carried out with beatings.

After the searches, six men — Yaroslav Kalin, Sergey Kosteyev, Nikolay Martynov, Mikhail Moysh, Aleksey Solnechny, and Andrey Tolmachev — were taken into custody, where they spent more than 2 years. The oldest of the detainees is Sergey Vasilyev, who is now 72 years old, stayed for 2 days in the temporary detention facility, after which he was placed under house arrest (and now again taken into custody in the court). In the pretrial detention center some of the men were often ill. "My friends and I suffered a lot of hardships and deprivation during the criminal prosecution," said Yaroslav Kalin. "We were in the worst cells and conditions possible. We have experienced the misery of imprisonment firsthand."

As part of this case, in November 2021, searches were also carried out at the homes of Denis Sarazhakov in Khakassia and Igor Popov in the Kemerovo Region, after which the men were placed in a pretrial detention center; they also spent more than 2 years in prison.

After a year of investigative actions, in December 2022, the case was submitted to the Oktyabrskiy District Court of Irkutsk. The prosecutor requested 3 to 7 years in a penal colony for the believers.

Speaking in court, Aleksey Solnechny said in his final statement: "I have been detained for more than two years on charges of a crime I did not commit. When you read the indictment, you can see that the investigator included in it all the fiction that he found on the Internet regarding Jehovah's Witnesses." He added: "Either I am one of Jehovah's Witnesses or I am an extremist. It is impossible to be both at the same time. And I declare: I am one of Jehovah's Witnesses, but I am not an extremist!"

Yaroslav Kalin emphasized in his final statement: "I truly wonder for what act such a term was requested for me. I did not sit just doing nothing during this trial. I looked deeply into the accusation and the arguments of the investigation and was convinced of the complete incompetence of the accusation and its illegality. I have not received an answer to the question: where and what is extremism? Neither my conscience nor my reasoning accepts the unfounded accusations that were made in court. And the requested punishment simply defies logic."

At one of the court hearings, he also spoke about how his relatives were exiled to Siberia for their faith during the Soviet era: "I was sure that history could not repeat itself. Russia cannot make the same mistakes. It cannot first imprison believers, then apologize to their children, and then again imprison their children and grandchildren for their faith in God."