Two Elderly Women From Khabarovsk Received Suspended Sentences. The Court Considered Talking About the Bible to Be Extremism

The Khabarovsk District Court completed the retrial of the criminal case of two Jehovah's Witnesses on January 20, 2025. Judge Kira Kirina sentenced pensioners Lyubov Kocherova, 66, and Lyubov Ovchinnikova, 66, to 5 years and 6 months of suspended sentence.

The first sentence in this case — a 6-year suspended sentence — was handed down in August 2023. State prosecutor Kateryna Trofimenko, who insisted on a real term, appealed against this decision. The appeal sent the case back for a new trial, which began in January 2024 in the same Khabarovsk District Court.

Preliminary and judicial investigations against Kocherova and Ovchinnikova have been going on for 2.5 years. The prosecution based the criminal case on audio recordings of divine services and conversations about the Bible, made by an infiltrated FSB agent, Stanislav Martyn. Speaking in court, the believers expressed their disagreement with the accusation and reminded that the constitutional right to freedom of religion cannot be a crime.

Since April 2020, one of the residents of the village of Knyaz-Volkonskoye, on the instructions of the FSB, began to make audio recordings of conversations about the Bible with Lyubov Kocherova and Lyubov Ovchinnikova. Two years later, a criminal case was opened against the pensioners for participating in the activities of an extremist organization and being involved in it. They were accused of "asking questions on religious topics related to ... understanding of the Bible." In March 2023, the case went to court, and in August of the same year, Kocherova and Ovchinnikova were sentenced to 6 years suspended. In December, an appeals court overturned the verdict and sent the case back for a new trial, which began in January 2024. After 11 months, the court sentenced the believers to 3 years of suspended sentence.