Timofey Zhukov Detained by Security Officials Attempting to Force a Psychiatric Examination in a Hospital

On February 5, 2020, in Khanty-Mansiysk, 40-year-old lawyer Timofey Zhukov was detained under unknown circumstances, whom the Surgut security forces are trying to put in a psychiatric hospital for a month, located more than a thousand kilometers from his home. Earlier, believers in Surgut reported torture.

On January 16, 2020, the judge of the Surgut City Court, Tatyana Slyusareva, issued a ruling according to which a believer from Surgut, Timofey Zhukov , must arrive at the Sverdlovsk Regional Psychiatric Hospital (Yekaterinburg) by February 5 for an examination within 30 days. Such a measure is equivalent to detention. On January 20, Zhukov appealed the decision to the Judicial Collegium for Criminal Cases of the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug - Yugra. This means that Judge Slyusareva's decision has not entered into legal force and must be reviewed by a higher court.

Nevertheless, on February 4, law enforcement officers in civilian clothes tried to find Timofey Zhukov in the building of the Surgut City Court. The believer allegedly went to seek protection in the court of the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug - Ugra, where he appealed, but was detained in Khanty-Mansiysk and taken away in an unknown direction.

Earlier, on February 15, 2019, at least 7 peaceful Jehovah's Witnesses were tortured in the building of the Investigative Committee of Russia in Surgut. A criminal case was opened against them and 14 other local believers under the article "organization and participation in an extremist organization." Reports of torture have attracted the attention of the Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights and the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation. Work is underway to establish the facts of what happened.