Name: Petrov Denis Aleksandrovich
Date of Birth: March 11, 2001
Current status: defendant
Articles of Criminal Code of Russian Federation: 282.2 (1)
Current restrictions: recognizance agreement

Biography

After a wave of searches in Yoshkar-Ola in the spring of 2022, Denis Petrov turned out to be one of 9 men against whom the FSB initiated a criminal case for practicing the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses.

Denis was born in 2001 in Yoshkar-Ola. As a child, he went in for swimming and studied at a music school, playing the violin and piano. After school, he entered the Volga State Technological University to study software engineering. During the first year, Denis began working as a programmer, which he continues to do to this day. He plans to set up his own IT company. In his free time he likes to play sports.

From a young age, Denis was fascinated by the way the Bible describes the world. He fell in love with this book and found answers to many life questions in it. Still being young, Denis made the decision to become one of Jehovah's Witnesses.

His parents and grandmother worry about Denis; they support him and assure him of their love.

Case History

In April 2022, the FSB initiated a criminal case against Jehovah’s Witnesses from Yoshkar-Ola. Searches were carried out at nine addresses; law enforcement officers used force against one of the believers, Yevgeny Plotnikov. He was arrested and subsequently placed in a detention center. In August 2022, Yevgeny was placed under house arrest, and in October he was placed under a ban on certain activities. From December of the same year, the FSB investigator began making other residents of the city defendants – Sergey Kulikov and his son Aleksey, Eduard Kapitonov and his son Ilya, Igor Alekseyev, Vladimir Usenko and Denis Petrov. The investigator regarded practicing their faith as extremist actions. The believers were made to sign a recognizance agreement. The case went to court in October 2024.
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