Appeal in Tatarstan Upheld the Sentence of Aleksey Gerasimov From Kazan - 6 Years in Prison

Aleksey Gerasimov, 43, one of Jehovah's Witnesses convicted of his faith, will nevertheless go to the colony. This decision was made on March 22, 2024 by a panel of judges of the Supreme Court of Tatarstan chaired by Marsel Fakhriev, approving the conviction of the believer.

Aleksey Gerasimov attended the hearing via video conference from the pre-trial detention center. He has been imprisoned since December 2023, when the Kirovskiy District Court of Kazan sentenced him to 6 years in prison, finding him guilty of extremism for continuing to practice the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses by participating in peaceful religious meetings and public Bible discussions.

The verdict was appealed. As stated in the appeal of Gerasimov's lawyer, among other things, "in the court of first instance there was no adversarial and equality of the parties, since the presiding judge deprived the defense of the right to protect secret witnesses from perjury."

The point is that the investigation and the prosecutor built the line of accusation on the basis of false testimony of Aleksandr Komzolov, who in the past attended the meetings of Jehovah's Witnesses. These testimonies are repeated verbatim in the materials of several other similar cases against believers in Kazan. Even grammatical errors are the same. According to Aleksey's wife Natalia Gerasimova, she and her husband were not familiar with Komzolov and, contrary to his testimony, never communicated with him. In connection with the falsifications, Natalia filed a complaint with the Investigative Committee of Russia and the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation against the actions of I. Izmailov, an employee of the Center for Countering Extremism, and A. Geniatullin, an investigator of the Investigative Committee, who were involved in her husband's case.

Earlier, speaking in the court of first instance with the last statement, the believer drew attention to the absence of any evidence of his guilt: "There is not a single victim in my case, which is confirmed by the case materials and the testimony of witnesses. During the entire trial, the prosecution did not indicate where, when, or in the presence of any persons I said or did anything that charged me with an extremist article." Aleksey Gerasimov still insists on his innocence.

As of March 2024, 13 Jehovah's Witnesses in Tatarstan have faced criminal prosecution for their faith, two of them are serving sentences in a penal colony, and nine more have received suspended sentences.