During one raid, officers put a 78-year-old man – deported to Siberia by the Soviet Union for his faith when he was 9 – up against a wall and handcuffed him (see below). The FSB investigator Lieutenant Aleksandr Chumakin again refused to talk to Forum 18 (see below).įive days after the criminal case was opened, about 10 groups of FSB security service and OMON riot police officers from Simferopol raided Filatov's and seven other homes in the northern Crimean town of Dzhankoi. The case – which the FSB launched on 10 November 2018 – is the first against Jehovah's Witnesses in occupied Crimea. The Russian FSB security service is still investigating the criminal case against Jehovah's Witness Sergei Filatov on the same "extremism"–related charges. This punishes "Organisation of" or "participation in" "the activity of a social or religious association or other organisation in relation to which a court has adopted a decision legally in force on liquidation or ban on the activity in connection with the carrying out of extremist activity".Īs alleged organiser, Suleimanov faced a maximum 10-year jail term, while the other three – deemed to be participants - faced a maximum 6-year jail term each. The four Muslims were convicted under Russian Criminal Code Article 282.2. So too did Yegor Zvantsev, lawyer for Abdurakhmanov.Īrsen Kubedinov's lawyer Jemil Temishev announced on his Facebook page on 22 January that he would not be appealing on behalf of his client. Judge Sergei Pogrebnyak issued the written verdicts to the men's lawyers on 24 January.Īleksandr Lesovoi, Suleimanov's lawyer, told Forum 18 on 24 January that it was too early to know if his client will appeal against the conviction. The case had been brought by the Russian FSB security service, based on its secret recordings of the meetings in mosques, testimony from unidentified "witnesses" and books seized from the men's homes (see below). "This is of course a question of freedom of conscience." "The men simply gathered in the local mosque to discuss religious questions," a legal specialist familiar with the case told Forum 18 in November 2018. These are believed to be the first criminal convictions in occupied Crimea related to the Tabligh Jamaat movement (see below). However, they rejected any "extremism" or "terrorism". The four men admitted that they were adherents of Tabligh Jamaat, telling the court they supported its aims of conducting missionary activity among fellow Muslims. "These lessons were not conspiratorial and took place in mosques" (see below). "At lessons we studied ayats from the Koran, the value of praying the namaz, and the zikr ," one of the men Talyat Abdurakhmanov told the court. The four men met openly in mosques to discuss their faith.
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