An Appeal in Kemerovo Upheld Aleksandr Bondarchuk's and Sergey Yavushkin's Sentence - Both Jehovah's Witnesses

On February 16, 2022, the Kemerovo Regional Court rejected the appeal of Aleksandr Bondarchuk and Sergey Yavushkin, leaving the sentence unchanged - 4 years of suspended imprisonment.

In the summer of 2021, the Zavodskoy District Court of Kemerovo found Bondarchuk and Yavushkin guilty of extremism. The prosecution presented prayers and the rental of a pool for the rite of Christian baptism as a "crime". The position of the prosecutor's office was based mainly on the testimony of a witness who was covertly filming the services. At one of the hearings, Yavushkin drew the court's attention to the fact that most of the witness' testimonies were false and contradicted each other. The verdict was appealed.

After the decision of the court of first instance, the believers were under house arrest. Prior to that, they spent 700 days under house arrest. Thus, at the time of the appeal decision, their movements had been restricted in total for more than 2.5 years. During the criminal prosecution, Yavushkin suffered a stroke, and his wife was hospitalized with nervous and emotional strain.

The believers vehemently reject the accusations of crimes and can appeal against the decisions of the courts in cassation and international instances. At one of the court hearings, Aleksandr Bondarchuk quoted the words of Russian President Putin: “You can’t force people to go against their faith, their traditions, family pedigree, in the end against truth, justice and just common sense!”

The groundlessness of the criminal prosecution of Yavushkin and Bondarchuk in May 2020 was confirmed by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. In its decision No. 10/2020, it was noted that criminal cases were initiated “only because [the accused] peacefully professed their religious beliefs, including having religious texts and Bibles with them, gathering together for worship with fellow believers.”