The Court Sentenced Yuriy Yakovlev, a 56-year-old Jehovah's Witness From Sosnovoborsk, to 6 Years and 2 Months in a Penal Colony

Text updated March 21, 2023

On March 17, 2023, the Sosnovoborsk City Court of the Krasnoyarsk Territory found Yuriy Yakovlev guilty of extremism for holding peaceful religious services online. The verdict can be appealed.

In March 2022, a criminal case was initiated against the believer, and his house was searched. After that, Yuriy Yakovlev was placed in a pre-trial detention center, where remains until now. Shortly before the start of the prosecution, his elderly mother, who needed care, moved in with the believer. After her son's arrest, her condition deteriorated.

The case was investigated by the main investigative department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Krasnoyarsk Territory and the Republic of Khakassia. The case has been in court since June 2022. According to the investigation, Yuriy carried out “general management of the organization, the determining of meeting times through online broadcasts, pastoral work, and the leading of the preaching activity.”

“All the evidence presented by the prosecution only confirms that after the liquidation of the legal entity, the believers continued to worship God together,” Yuriy Yakovlev commented on the accusations. “It is insulting to expect that after the liquidation of a legal entity… believers… will hold services exclusively within the framework of other religious denominations. This, in fact, means for them a renunciation of the faith and nullifies the explanations of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation.”

During the trial, witnesses for the prosecution were unable to confirm the believer's guilt in any actual crimes against the state and the individual. During interrogation in court, a secret witness withdrew the previously given testimony against the defendant. In addition, the court questioned Grigory Illarionov, an expert in religious studies, who reiterated that the courts in Russia did not prohibit Jehovah's Witnesses from gathering together for worship.

The prosecutor requested 8 years of imprisonment in a penal colony for the believer, but the court imposed 6 years and 2 months.

Yuriy Yakovlev is already the 10th resident of the region convicted for the faith of Jehovah's Witnesses. A total of 29 Jehovah's Witnesses are facing prosecution for their religious beliefs in the Krasnoyarsk Territory.

In June 2022, the European Court of Human Rights found that the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia contradicts the European Convention on Human Rights. “The imposition of criminal sanctions for manifestation of religious beliefs amounts to interference with the exercise of the right to freedom of religion,” the court ruled (§ 264).