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The court returned to the prosecutor's office a criminal case against 7 believers from Orenburg. Two of them spent almost 3 months in jail
Orenburg RegionOn January 14, 2020, the judge of the Industrial District Court of Orenburg, Tatyana Gorbacheva, returned the criminal case against 7 believers to the prosecutor's office due to the vague nature of the charges and the lack of motives and goals of the alleged crime.
In its ruling, the court noted that "the indictment must indicate the motives and purposes of committing crimes," which is not the case. The court also noted that the indictment did not specify exactly how the defendants Logunov and Suvorov "coordinated the activities of the Orenburg LRO of Jehovah's Witnesses ... coordinated and coordinated their actions on the leadership of the LRO of Jehovah's Witnesses "Orenburg" with a higher organization, received religious literature, including extremist content, from the Religious Organization "Administrative Center of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia". It is noted that it is often unclear from the prosecution which actions were committed by Logunov and which by Suvorov.
The criminal case against Vladimir Kochnev, Alexander Suvorov, Vladislav Kolbanov, Pavel Lekontsev, Sergey Logunov, Alexey Matveev and Nikolai Zhugin was initiated on May 14, 2018, after which Kochnev and Suvorov were thrown into a pre-trial detention center for 78 days. In October 2019, the investigation decided to change the articles of the charge.