A 70-year-old believer is expected to be sentenced in Kabardino-Balkaria on December 27

Arkada Hakobyan will be sentenced in the Prokhladnensky District Court on December 27, 2018. Earlier, on December 21, the arguments of the parties were held in his case, and he himself made the last word. The prosecutor asked for a 3-year suspended sentence. The believer insists on his complete innocence.

A suspended sentence means that if during this period Arkadya Hakobyan is seen in something that the court regards as extremist activity or other crime, or failure to fulfill the imposed obligations (not to change his place of residence, to appear for registration, not to visit certain places), then the believer will go to the colony. Therefore, any conviction would be a substantial violation of human rights.

Arkadya Hakobyan was prosecuted under Part 1 of Article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The prosecution relies on the testimony of witnesses that Arkady Hakobyan made a speech to fellow believers, in which he allegedly spoke derogatorily about representatives of other religions. The defense insists that Hakobyan did not make a speech at all on the specified day. The prosecution does not have an audio or video recording of Hakobyan's speech. It is also significant that the video recordings from the surveillance cameras were seized by law enforcement officers and destroyed. Moreover, there is evidence in the case that the witnesses were not present at the service on the day they indicated. Finally, the court-appointed psychological and linguistic examination of the testimonies came to the conclusion that there are no signs of propaganda of the inferiority of citizens in the words attributed to Arkada Hakobyan.

Law enforcement agencies had no complaints against Hakobyan until the security forces launched a campaign in Russia to harass Jehovah's Witnesses on the basis of far-fetched accusations.

The announcement of the verdict will begin on December 27, 2018 at 16:00 in the Prokhladnensky District Court at the address: Kabardino-Balkarian Republic, Prokhladny, K. Marx St., 36.