Aliyev, Shulyarenko, Kriger and Zagulin will Remain in the Colony. The Court of Cassation Upheld the Harsh Sentence for Faith

On March 27, 2024, the Ninth Court of Cassation of General Jurisdiction in Vladivostok did not satisfy the cassation appeal against the verdict of Alam Aliyev, Sergey Shulyarenko, Valeriy Kriger and Dmitriy Zagulin. They will continue to serve time in Blagoveshchensk for their faith in God.

Earlier, in December 2022, the court of first instance sentenced Aliyev to 6.5 years in prison, Shulyarenko and Kriger to 7 years each, and Zagulin to 3.5 years for allegedly organizing and financing extremist activities. An appeal in June 2023 reduced the prison sentences of Sergey Shulyarenko and Valeriy Kriger by only three months.

The believers were blamed for holding 7 services, as well as the collection of voluntary donations for the common needs of believers. At the same time, the court did not cite a single excerpt from the record of divine services that promotes incitement to hatred or enmity. The cassation appeal states: "As a result of a miscarriage of justice, Aliyev, Zagulin, Kriger, Shulyarenko were convicted only because they professed beliefs based on the Bible and peacefully practiced their Christian faith as Jehovah's Witnesses." The defense also stressed that the verdict is based only on assumptions that the money was spent on extremist activities. At the same time, the time, place, methods of collection, receipt, storage and their expenditure were not indicated. The court did not establish the motives for committing the crime, but recognized the believers as extremists.

The court completely ignored the presence of serious diseases in Alam Aliyev: hypertension, coronary heart disease, diabetes mellitus and problems with the spine.

The European Court of Human Rights responded to the complaint of Alam Aliyev and other applicants from Russia and ruled that the involvement of Jehovah's Witnesses on charges of extremist activities violates their rights to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. The Court called on the Russian Federation to take all necessary measures to stop the criminal prosecution of Jehovah's Witnesses and release them from prison.

In the Jewish Autonomous Region, 24 of Jehovah's Witnesses were prosecuted for their religious beliefs. Half of them are married couples.