Court of Appeal in Sverdlovsk Region Upheld Suspended Sentences for Tree of Jehovah's Witnesses. One of Convicts Is Disabled Person of Group II

On March 24, 2025, the Sverdlovsk Regional Court upheld the sentence of Andrey Kozhushko, Andrey Bannykh and Pavel Loshchinin: 6 years of suspended imprisonment with a probationary period of 4 years.

In the appeal, the defense pointed out that the guilt of Kozhushko, Bannykh and Loshchinin had not been proven, and the verdict of the first instance had been passed with numerous violations. "The case file contains only evidence of the religious activities of the Jehovah's Witnesses' faith which is not prohibited in the Russian Federation," the document says.

Speaking about the prosecution witnesses, whose testimony formed the basis of the criminal case, one of the lawyers said: "These are just random people who were able to be found by the operatives and interrogated by the investigators. There is no evidentiary value in the words of these persons to confirm the qualification chosen by the prosecution." The defense pointed out that the prosecution witness Isaev participated in operational-search activities and was interested in the outcome of the case, therefore his testimony was aimed "not at establishing the truth, but at an attempt ... substitution of religious activity with extremist activity."

In his final statement, Andrey Bannykh said: "My God Jehovah teaches me through the Bible not to be an extremist. Proof of this is [the feedback of] people who surround me at work, neighbors, family, my friends, and even the investigator. Your Honor, there has never been, is not and will never be any extremism on my part."

Andrey Bannykh was one of the applicants in a collective complaint that Jehovah's Witnesses from Russia filed with the ECHR shortly after their legal entities were banned in 2017. In June 2022, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the prosecution of Jehovah's Witnesses is unlawfully. "The respondent State must take all necessary measures to secure the discontinuation of all pending criminal proceedings against Jehovah's Witnesses," the court said in its decision (§ 290).