The Court in Seversk Sentenced the 80-Year-Old Widow Yelena Saveliyeva to Four Years of Suspended Sentence for Talking About Jehovah God

On November 17, 2021, the judge of the Seversk City Court of the Tomsk Region Svetlana Chebotareva found Yelena Saveliyeva, a teacher with forty years of experience, guilty under the article on the activities of an extremist organization and sentenced her to four years of suspended sentence for talking about the Bible.

The verdict has not entered into force and can be appealed. The believer insists on her complete innocence. There are no victims in the case. The prosecutor asked the court to impose a fine of half a million rubles on the believer.

Yelena was born at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the first years of her life were spent in poverty, hunger and fear. She was raised by her grandmother and later returned to be raised by her mother and stepfather, who abused her. Yelena left home early to study and devoted her life to teaching. Currently, 80-year-old Yelena Saveliyeva is a widow. The criminal prosecution damaged the reputation of the peaceful pensioner and caused her a lot of grief.

The case against Yelena Saveliyeva was opened on March 25, 2021 by the investigator A. G. Kolpakov. It was investigated for about 3 months by the Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation in the Tomsk Region. The criminal case was based on testimony from two women who portrayed an interest in the Bible. FSB agent Kira Klisheva and Rosgvardia employee Yelena Studenova recorded conversations with an elderly woman on a dictaphone and a video camera, and transferred these recordings to law enforcement agencies.

From the indictment in the case of Yelena Saveliyeva in the commission of a crime, it is clear that the criminal prosecution of an elderly believer is carried out only for religious reasons. Peaceful conversations with people about God are interpreted as "persuading, recruiting and involving" other persons in the activities of an organization banned in Russia.

In total, 7 criminal cases were initiated against Jehovah's Witnesses in the Tomsk Region. In 2020, the court sentenced one of them - Sergey Klimov - to 6 years in prison in a general regime colony only because of his faith in Jehovah God.

“Innocuous believers are accused of 'grave crimes', but there are no victims in the case, nor any signs of real crimes against a person or the state,"— Yaroslav Sivulskiy, a representative of the European Association of Jehovah's Witnesses, comments on the current situation in Russia.

Russian and foreign leaders and organizations unanimously condemn the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia. This is how the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) comments on the situation in Russia: “All people, including Jehovah's Witnesses, should be able to peacefully and without discrimination enjoy freedom of religion and assembly, as guaranteed by the Constitution of the Russian Federation and Russia's international obligations, including Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights. In light of this, we call on the authorities to drop charges against all detainees for exercising their rights to freedom of religion, expression and peaceful assembly, and to release them.”

On October 28, 2021, the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation ruled that the divine services of Jehovah's Witnesses, their joint rituals and ceremonies do not in themselves constitute a crime under Art. 282.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, despite the liquidation of their legal entities. During the meeting of the Plenary Session, Judge-Rapporteur Yelena Peysikova separately noted that new clarifications had appeared in pursuance of the instructions of the President of Russia.