A court in Krasnoyarsk heavily fined one of Jehovah's Witnesses. Igor Gusev will have to pay the state 600,000 rubles for his faith

In the Krasnoyarsk Territory yet another guilty verdict was passed against one of Jehovah's Witnesses: On November 17, 2022, the Zheleznodorozhny District Court of Krasnoyarsk imposed a fine of 600,000 rubles on 58-year-old Igor Gusev. Judge Aleksandr Aksyutenko considered it illegal to discuss the Bible peacefully with fellow believers.

The verdict has not entered into force and can be appealed. The believer insists on his innocence. According to him, the FSB investigator suggested "a renunciation of faith in Jehovah God" be put in writing. In return, the believer was promised that the case would be stopped. “It was at that moment that I realized that I was being tried not for a crime, but for my faith,” said Igor Gusev.

The case against Gusev was initiated on February 17, 2022—2 years after the start of the criminal prosecution of his fellow believer, Vitaliy Sukhov, in whose case Gusev was a witness. Rosfinmonitoring added the believer to the list of extremists, as a result, all bank accounts of Igor Gusev were blocked.

After 5 months of investigation, the case went to court. The meetings were held in a hurry: the judge did not listen fully to the defendant's statement regarding the charges, and a secret witness was called without the prior knowledge of the lawyer or the defendant. Therefore, they could not prepare for his interrogation.

The charges of extremism against the believer were based either on general phrases or on lawful actions such as praying and reading Bible passages aloud. Addressing the court, Igor Gusev said: "Even the encouragement to acquire wisdom is regarded as something forbidden." There is not a single victim in the case, but despite this, the prosecutor asked the court to sentence the believer to 6 years of imprisonment in a penal colony.

Igor Gusev drew attention to the fact that the decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation of April 20, 2017 does not prohibit the activity of Jehovah's Witnesses as a religious denomination in general, and does not require believers to stop exercising their constitutional rights and freedoms, including those performed jointly. In addition, in a letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation dated February 20, 2021, it was clearly emphasized that the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation “has not evaluated either the legality of the religious beliefs of Jehovah’s Witnesses or the ways in which they are expressed.”