The Court of Cassation Upheld the Sentence of Four Believers From Volgograd. They Will Continue to Serve Their Sentences in Penal Colonie

On January 19, 2023, the Fourth General Jurisdiction Court of Cassation in Krasnodar did not change the guilty verdict and appeal ruling in the case of Valeriy Rogozin, Igor Egozaryan, Sergey Melnik and Denis Peresunko, who were sentenced to long terms for their faith as Jehovah's Witnesses.

The court of first instance passed the verdict in September 2021. Rogozin was sentenced to 6 years and 5 months in a penal colony, Peresunko—6 years and 3 months in a penal colony, Melnik and Egozaryan—6 years in a penal colony. In March 2022, the court of appeal upheld the decision. Egozaryan, Peresunko and Rogozin have already been serving their sentences in a penal colony since August 2022, while Sergey Melnik was recently transferred to the place of serving his sentence.

The believers still do not agree with the verdict, as they stated in their cassation appeal: “Law enforcement agencies have not established a single fact of committing . . . unlawful activity. Even during surveillance, nothing was recorded to claim that . . . Jehovah's Witnesses are committing or calling for committing unlawful acts.”

The prosecutor, in his objection to the cassation appeal, pointed out that the criminal intent of the defendants was to organize the activity of a banned religious organization, and their motive, in his opinion, was the desire to continue this activity, although the in fact believers exercised the right to profess and spread their faith.

In June 2022, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the prosecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia is unlawful: “Only religious expressions and actions that contain or call for violence, hate or discrimination can serve as a basis for suppressing them as ‘extremist’.” (§271).