Russia Three people have been jailed Jehovah’s Witnesses A spokesman for the faith-based group said it was the harshest sentence ever handed down to members of the faith-based group, following hundreds of prosecutions, each time for more than eight years for alleged extremist activities. judgment.
New York spokesman Jarrod Lopes said the case followed a 2018 police raid on a cafe where about 50 Jehovah’s Witnesses were attending a social, not religious, event. .
Lopez quoted one person as saying: “All the facts considered during the trial clearly prove that I was persecuted not for an actual crime but for my religious views. The prosecution, without presenting any evidence, Trying to promote the idea that I was guilty.
Lopez said Polevodov got sentenced to 8.5 years in prison, Vitaly Zuk received an 8-year- and-four-month term of imprisonment while King will be behind bars for eight years and two months. He further noted that three women were given five-year jail terms with five and four years suspended sentences slapped upon Zuk’s wife Tatyana Sedova Svetlana and Maya Karpushkina respectively.
Russian religious life is mainly composed of russian orthodox churchwith the support and loyalty of the President Vladimir Putin. Some Orthodox scholars consider Jehovah’s Witnesses, known for their door-to-door preaching and refusal of military service, to be a “totalitarian sect.”
Russia’s Supreme Court designated Jehovah’s Witnesses as “extremists” in 2017, liquidating and banning nearly 400 of the organization’s chapters across the country.
Since then, authorities have raided 2,102 Jehovah’s Witnesses’ homes, criminally charged 811 men and women and sentenced 170 people to prison – including 105 with sentences five years or longer. Lopez said so
