On 30 November, a court in the city of Taganrog, in Rostov Oblast, southern Russia, found 16 members of the local community of Jehovah’s Witnesses guilty of organizing and participating in a banned “extremist organization”.
Three of them, Nikolai Trotsiuk, Yuri Baklushin and Aleksandr Skvortsov, who are community elders, were given five-and-a-half years’ suspended prison sentences each. A fourth man, also an elder, Aleksei Koptev,
was given five years and three months’ suspended prison sentence. The
court issued other convicted women and men with heavy fines and ruled
that they will not have to pay them as the limitation period for the
crime has expired. All were found guilty under Article 282.2 of the
Russian Criminal Code (“organization of activities of an extremist
organization”). The four elders were also found guilty of involving
minors in criminal activities (Article 150 of the Criminal Code).
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