The Court Sentenced the Previously Acquitted Aleksey Khabarov to 2.5 Years in Prison

On October 20, 2023, the Porkhov District Court of the Pskov Region issued a verdict in the case Aleksey Khabarov, one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, for the third time. This time, judge Natalia Kapustina found him guilty of extremism and sentenced him to 2 years and 6 months in a general regime colony. He was taken into custody in the courtroom.

Khabarov's accusation of extremism was based on ordinary religious activities. The believer explained: "Professing religion does not simply mean silently believing that there is a God. Jehovah's Witnesses ... study the Bible, discuss it with others, and try to live in harmony with what is written in the Bible." In his final statement, he added: "My real motive — love — is directly opposite to enmity and hatred, which means that there is no subjective side of the crime. Consequently, there is no corpus delicti as such." The believer has the right to appeal the court's decision once again.

The criminal prosecution of Khabarov began in 2019. The case did not go to court the first time — the prosecutor's office identified shortcomings in it and returned it to the investigator. Various court proceedings have been ongoing since October 2020. For the first time, the court sentenced Khabarov to 3 years of suspended sentence, although the prosecutor requested 3.5 years in prison. The appeal overturned this decision, and the court in a new composition acquitted Khabarov. But the second appeal did not agree with such a verdict and sent the case for the third consideration in the first instance.

This is not the first time that cases against Jehovah's Witnesses have been reviewed several times. This was the case with the Bazhenov spouses and Vera Zolotova, Dmitriy Barmakin, Aleksandr Pryanikov, Venera and Darya Dulova. Russian and international law scholars are calling for an end to the repression of Jehovah's Witnesses.