Appeal in the Kemerovo Region Upheld the Sentence of Pensioner Tatyana Sushilnikova — 4 Years Suspended for Believing in Jehovah God

On January 16, 2024, a panel of judges of the Kemerovo Regional Court upheld the sentence of 64-year-old Tatyana Sushilnikova from Novokuznetsk — 4 years of suspended imprisonment for participating in the activities of an extremist organization.

According to the believer, the verdict of the first instance was issued with gross violations of the law and is subject to cancellation. In her appeal, Sushilnikova noted that the court's decision does not contain a description of the illegal actions of which she was accused, as well as specific dates and places of their commission. Witnesses interrogated by the court admitted that they did not know Tatyana, did not talk to her on religious topics, and did not receive Bible literature from her. A sample of the believer's voice for phonoscopic examination was taken in violation of procedural norms.

"The verdict lists more than 200 pieces of evidence ... [However] the court does not provide information on how they confirm my guilt. In particular, there are numerous references to personal notebooks, notepads, documents, etc., seized from third parties, in which I am not mentioned and to which I have nothing to do," Sushilnikova said. Thus, the court considered telephone conversations with her husband to be one of the "evidence" of guilt, while audio recordings were not provided and, accordingly, the content of the conversations was not established.

Tatyana Sushilnikova said that the decision of the court of first instance in reality means the introduction of a ban on religion. She noted: "All my numerous references to the Bible, which obliges Christians to worship God together, which was the real motive for my behavior, were left without any evaluation." In passing the verdict, the court ignored the explanation of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation that the Russian legal entities of Jehovah's Witnesses had been liquidated, and not the doctrine itself. At the same time, the expressions "Religious Organization of Jehovah's Witnesses", "International Religious Organization of Jehovah's Witnesses" and "Jehovah's Witnesses" mentioned in the verdict are not legal entities and have not been liquidated by the Supreme Court.

The Court of Appeal refused to take Tatyana's arguments into account. A similar decision was made by the same court in March 2023 against the spouse of the believer, 67-year-old Sergey Sushilnikov, approving his 6-year suspended sentence. Judge Zinoviev also previously recognized the detention of the Sushilnikovs' fellow believers, Maksim Morozov and Yuriy Usanov from the town of Taiga, as lawful.

Since the ban on Jehovah's Witnesses in 2017, more than 2,000 homes of believers have been searched, about 400 people have been imprisoned, and more than 730 believers have been charged with extremism.