An Appeal in the City of Nizhny Novgorod Upheld the Six-Year Suspended Sentence Imposed on Gevorg Gevorkyan, One of Jehovah's Witnesses

On March 21, 2023, the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Court dismissed Gevorg Gevorkyan's appeal against the verdict of the court of first instance, which found him guilty of organizing the activities of an extremist organization and gave him a six-year suspended sentence.

Addressing the Court of Appeal in his final statement, Gevorkyan noted that the criminal prosecution ruined his health and had a negative impact on his wife's health. In addition, according to the believer, the “humiliating search accompanied by verbal and physical insults” carried out at his workplace tarnished his reputation in the eyes of his colleagues. Gevorg expressed his feelings in the following words: “Does a person deserve all this, a person whose so-called fault consists only of believing in God not merely in words but also in deeds, striving, not for enmity, but for peace?”

In the summer of 2019, Gevorg Gevorkyan and his family experienced two searches in one day and interrogations that lasted many hours. According to the believer, an audio recording device was installed in his home. Nizhny Novgorod law enforcement officers accused Gevorg of conducting joint religious services of Jehovah's Witnesses, which served as the basis for his prosecution.

On January 17, 2022, the Avtozavodsky District Court of Nizhny Novgorod found Gevorg Gevorkyan guilty of committing a crime under Part 1 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The prosecutor then requested that he serve eight years in a penal colony, but the court gave him a suspended sentence. With the decision of the appellate court, the verdict came into force, but the believer still insists on his innocence and has the right to appeal the decision in the cassation court.

Initially, the criminal case against Gevorg Gevorkyan was separated from the case of Sergey Malyanov and others. It is still at the trial stage. Guilty verdicts have already been handed down in the Nizhny Novgorod region against eight of Jehovah's Witnesses. Not one of the criminal cases against Jehovah's Witnesses provided a single piece of evidence that the believers' actions undermined the foundations of the constitutional order, destroyed marriages, or caused any other harm to the state or the individual.