The Appeal Upholds the Verdict of a Pensioner from the Village of Kholmskaya — Vasiliy Meleshko Will Spend 3 Years in a Penal Colony for Believing in Jehovah

On October 7, 2021, the Judicial Collegium of the Krasnodar Regional Court, chaired by Judge Yevgeny Matyakin, dismissed the appeal of Vasily Meleshko. The court considered conversations with friends on religious topics a "socially dangerous" act and approved the punishment in the form of 3 years in prison.

The sentence of the lower court came into force. A believer has the right to defend his innocence in cassation and in international courts.

In just two sessions, the judge of the Abinsk District Court, Mikhail Ostashevskiy, found Vasily Meleshko guilty of extremism and sentenced him to three years in a general regime colony.

Early in the morning of April 7, 2021, the task force searched the homes of the Meleshko spouses. The believer said that the security forces explained their arrival with the words "all this is happening on the initiative of the Ministry of Justice from Moscow." 5 days later, Vasily was officially charged with extremism. According to the investigation, the believer's guilt lies in the fact that he "conducted and listened to lectures based on religious literature ... entered into conversations and religious discussions with other participants, participated in collective discussions of religious books."

The criminal case is based, among other things, on the results of a comprehensive psychological and religious examination dated May 31, 2021, which classifies the conversation between Vasily Meleshko and Aleksandr Ivshin , convicted of believing in God, as "religious topics, and in particular, to serving Jehovah God."

During the investigation, Vasiliy spent 127 days under recognizance not to leave, and after the verdict was announced, he ended up in a pre-trial detention center, where he waited 2 months for an appeal decision.

Vasiliy became the 4th Jehovah's Witness from Kholmskaya to be sentenced to a real prison term for his religious beliefs. In the Krasnodar Territory, 17 Jehovah's Witnesses have already been persecuted for their peaceful religious views.

As in other cases, the prosecution against Vasiliy Meleshko unjustifiably equates ordinary aspects of communal religious life with extremism. Back in 2018, Russian public figures warned about the dangers of such a substitution of concepts in their joint statement : "If society does not protect Jehovah's Witnesses, if they are not restored to their rights, this will mean that anyone can be declared an extremist."

Human rights activists and organizations outside the Russian Federation have expressed similar concerns. In its statement, the OSCE emphasizes: "We are concerned about the unjustified criminalization of the peaceful activities of members of the Jehovah's Witnesses communities in Russia, the liquidation of this community in the country. This Supreme Court decision poses a threat to the values and principles on which democratic, free, open, pluralistic and tolerant societies are founded."