A 49-year-old Jehovah's Witness has been awaiting trial in Tomsk for 12 months

June 3, 2019 marks exactly one year since the raid on the basis of religious repression was carried out in Tomsk . Local Jehovah's Witnesses, including an 83-year-old woman, were taken out of their homes and loaded onto a bus to be taken for interrogation. The court sent the detained Sergey Klimov to pre-trial detention center No. 1 in the Tomsk region. On May 28, 2019, the court once again extended his detention.

The past year has been filled with anxieties and sorrows for many Tomsk believers, especially for Yulia Klimova, Sergey's wife. The couple celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary on April 7, 2019 on opposite sides of the prison wall. Immediately after her husband's arrest, Yulia Klimova, together with other wives of citizens arrested for their faith, sent an open collective letter to all members of the Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights. The letter began with the words: "An open letter to you is our cry of despair. Our dear people ... thrown behind bars on suspicion that they read the commandments of the Bible with us, with our children and friends, and prayed to God." In turn, the Human Rights Council sent an appeal to the Prosecutor General's Office with a request to verify the legality of the criminal prosecution of Jehovah's Witnesses. Unfortunately, the Prosecutor General's Office did not stop the repression.

Long before the initiation of a criminal case, the judge of the Tomsk Regional Court, Andrei Goncharov, allowed the Center "E" to carry out operational-search measures against Sergei Klimov: wiretapping of telephone conversations and removal of information from technical communication channels. In addition, the security forces sent an informant to the believers - a man who, pretending to be interested in the Bible, provoked believers into discussions about God.

Law enforcement officers inappropriately call the religion of citizens participation in the activities of an extremist organization. Prominent public figures of Russia, the Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation, the President of the Russian Federation, as well as international organizations - the European Union External Action Service, observers of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights - drew attention to this problem. Jehovah's Witnesses have nothing to do with extremism and insist on their complete innocence. The Russian government has repeatedly stated that the decisions of the Russian courts on the liquidation and prohibition of organizations of Jehovah's Witnesses "do not assess the doctrine of Jehovah's Witnesses, do not contain a restriction or prohibition to practice the above teachings individually."