Karpova Mariya

Name: Karpova Mariya Viktorovna
Date of Birth: November 18, 1980
Current status: who has served the main sentence
Articles of Criminal Code of Russian Federation: 282.2 (1)
Time spent in prison: 361 day in a pre-trial detention, 882 day Under house arrest
Sentence: punishment in the form of 6 years of imprisonment, with deprivation of the right to engage in activities related to leadership and participation in the work of religious public organizations for a period of 5 years, with restriction of liberty for a period of 1 year, punishment in the form of imprisonment shall be considered suspended with a probationary period of 3 years 6 months

Biography

After a raid on the homes of believers in Dagestan on June 1, 2019, law enforcement officers detained four civilians — one woman and three men. Two days later, the Sovetsky District Court of Makhachkala sent all four to a pre-trial detention center. Among them is Maria Karpova.

Maria was born in 1980 in Magadan. She was the middle child in the family: Maria has 2 brothers - Alexander and Fedor. As a child, she was fond of skiing. Maria loves to travel and is fond of reading.

She graduated from the Maykop Technical School with a degree in veterinary medicine. She worked as a food quality control laboratory assistant and, more recently, as a hairdresser.

For some time Mariya lived in Neftegorsk, in 2004 she moved to Makhachkala.

From her youth, Maria wondered about the future, and having found answers to her questions in the Bible, at the age of 18 she decided to embark on the path of Christianity.

The criminal prosecution turned Maria's life upside down - she lost her job, she began to have health problems.

In August 2019, Maria's father died, but she was not allowed to attend the funeral, as well as to see her mother. Despite the hardships that have befallen Maria, she tries to find the positive in her circumstances, to notice support from God and fellow believers, and to help people even in the conditions of the pre-trial detention center.

Case History

In the summer of 2019, the homes of local Jehovah’s Witnesses were searched in four cities of Dagestan. Two religious brochures on the list of extremist materials were planted in one of the homes. Prior to this, the FSB initiated a criminal case against Arsen Abdullaev, Anton Dergalev, Marat Abdulgalimov and Mariya Karpova, accusing them of organizing the activities of an extremist organization. Additionally, the three men were charged with financing a banned organization, while the woman was charged with involving others in it. All four were put on the Rosfinmonitoring list of extremists and terrorists. The believers spent 362 days in pre-trial detention, after which they were placed under house arrest. In 2020, the cassation court declared that their detention in a pre-trial detention center for 8 out of 12 months was unlawful. In March 2021, the consideration of the case on the merits began. In November 2022, the court gave Abdullayev, Abdulgalimov and Dergalev 6.5 year suspended sentences and gave Karpova a 6 year suspended sentence.
Timeline
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