There is a mass raid on Jehovah's Witnesses in Sochi. At Least Two Believers Detained

On the evening of October 10, 2019, groups of armed, masked security officers, sometimes with dogs, invaded at least 19 homes of Jehovah's Witnesses in Sochi, Krasnodar Territory. During the searches, 68-year-old Nikolai Kuzichkin and 45-year-old Vyacheslav Popov were detained.

Searches took place in Dagomys, Khost, Sochi, Adler, Krasnaya Polyana and the villages of Veseloe and Chereshnya. Law enforcement officers drove up in cars with local license plates, as well as in cars from the Rostov region.

In some cases, the seizure groups cordoned off the homes of believers and broke locks. During the searches, electronic devices and books about the Bible were seized.

The ban and liquidation of legal entities of Jehovah's Witnesses in 2017 have long escalated into real persecution of ordinary believers, most of whom have never been members of liquidated legal entities. Recently, the number of criminal cases has increased significantly, dozens of men and women are behind bars. The believers are waiting for the decision of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), where they filed a complaint.

Update. A total of 36 searches were conducted in Sochi in one day on October 10, 2019. The geography of the roundup: from the Lazarevskoye microdistrict up to the village of Krasnaya Polyana in the mountains and the village of Veseloye near the border with Abkhazia. (The events in Sochi broke the sad record of Nizhny Novgorod, where on July 16, 2019, 35 searches were carried out in the homes of believers.)