Biography
Sergey Naymushin, a Jehovah's Witness from the Republic of Mari El, found out about the criminal case initiated against him when security forces searched his home.
Sergey was born in April 1984 in the city of Yoshkar-Ola. As a child, he was fond of various sports, most of all he loved to play football. After school, he trained as a car mechanic and worked in various car services, then as a driver for intercity buses. Later, Sergey got a higher education in economics. He still likes to play sports, especially he likes going to the swimming pool.
From childhood his mother instilled high moral values in Sergey. When they were invited to a meeting of Jehovah's Witnesses in 1995, they gladly accepted and eagerly began studying the Bible. Soon they both became Jehovah's Witnesses.
Relatives and friends are worried about Sergey and do not understand why he is being prosecuted.
Case History
In April 2022, the FSB initiated a criminal case against Jehovah’s Witnesses from Yoshkar-Ola. Searches were conducted at nine addresses, and law enforcement officers used force against one of the believers, Yevgeniy Plotnikov. He was detained and subsequently placed in a pretrial detention center. In August 2022, Yevgeniy was transferred to house arrest, and in October, he was placed under a ban on certain actions. In December of the same year, the FSB investigator began charging other residents of the city: Sergey Kulikov and his son Aleksey, Eduard Kapitonov and his son Ilya, Igor Alekseyev, Vladimir Usenko, Denis Petrov, Ilya Buryi and Sergey Naymushin. The investigator regarded practicing their faith as actions of an extremist nature and placed them under a recognizance agreement. In October 2024, the case went to court, 3 months later the prosecutor requested 9 years in a penal colony for the believers, and in February of the same year, the court sentenced them to fines: Plotnikov 500,000 rubles, and the rest 600,000 rubles.
