Peaceful Citizen of Maykop Sentenced to 6 Years in Prison for Practicing his Religion and Reading Bible

On March 19, 2025, the judicial panel of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Adygea upheld the harsh sentence imposed on Nikolay Saparov by the court of first instance — 6 years in a penal colony. Although the verdict has only now entered into force, the believer has been behind bars for almost three years.

The defense considers any guilty verdict a violation of Saparov's right to freedom of religion. "The key evidence of compliance by N.V. Saparov and other believers of the Jehovah's Witnesses denomination with the requirements of the law is a video recording of the meetings for worship, made during operational search activities and examined in court," the lawyer said. "During the viewing of the video of the meetings for worship, the prosecution was unable to indicate to the court at what minute of the meetings for worship the believers read the 'prohibited' publications. The reason is simple: such publications were not discussed by believers and they were simply not present at the service."

The lawyer commented on the psycholinguistic examination of Ruslan Levinskiy, which was used by the prosecution, but was found to be unreliable by another group of experts: "To say that the conclusions of R.V. Levinskiy are unfounded and groundless is to say nothing. This is an explosive mixture of outright incompetence and, apparently, bias against representatives of the Jehovah's Witnesses denomination as a whole."

Nikolay's detention in 2022 was accompanied by torture by law enforcement officers, including with the use of electric shockers, and planting compromising evidence in order to plead guilty. Even the European Union commented on the situation with the mistreatment of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia: "Torture and other forms of ill-treatment are among the most heinous violations of human rights, the inviolability of the person and the humiliation of human dignity."