In Adygea, an elderly Jehovah’s Witness was sentenced to life imprisonment

The Maikop city court found 68-year-old Jehovah’s Witness Mykola Voishchev guilty of organizing the activities of an extremist organization and sentenced him to three years of imprisonment in a general regime colony with a one-hour restriction of freedom.

Also, Voishchev was banned from engaging in educational activities and activities related to leadership and participation in religious and public organizations for four years, the portal “Jehovah’s Witnesses. Legal Situation in Russia” reports. The verdict was handed down on September 14, but it became known only now.

The prosecutor’s office requested a sentence of seven years in prison.

Taking into account the time spent in the pre-trial detention center, which was included in the term of punishment with the increasing coefficient of “a day for one and a half”, Voishchev has about one and a half years left to serve in the colony.

The portal “Jehovah’s Witnesses. Legal situation in Russia” notes that the basis of the accusation was the testimony of two classified witnesses who reported only that Voishchev is a Jehovah’s Witness, but did not hear him call for extremism. It is also reported that the psycholinguistic examination was performed by a specialist who has no linguistic training.

• The case against Mykola Voishchev was initiated in October 2022. He was sent under arrest. Vyoshche told the lawyer that he was kept in an overcrowded cell and forced to sleep on the floor. After being transferred to a pre-trial detention center, he was left without the necessary medicines. The defense failed to challenge the restraining order.
• The human rights project “Support of political prisoners. Memorial” recognized Voishchev as a political prisoner.
• In 2017, the Supreme Court recognized the “Management Center of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia” as an extremist organization, liquidated it and banned its activities on the territory of Russia.
• In 2022, the European Court of Human Rights found the ban on Jehovah’s Witnesses organizations and the subsequent persecution of believers to be illegal.