Jail term for Jehovah’s Witness

MOSCOW: A Russian court yesterday found a Danish adherent of the Jehovah’s Witnesses guilty of organising the activities of a banned extremist organisation and jailed him for six years.

Armed police detained Dennis Christensen, a 46-year-old builder, in May 2017 at a prayer meeting in Oryol, about 320km south of Moscow after a court in the region outlawed the local Jehovah’s Witnesses a year earlier.

Russia’s Supreme Court later ruled the group was an “extremist” organisation.

Christiansen had pleaded not guilty, saying he had only been practicing his religion, something he said was legal according to the Russian constitution.

The US-headquartered Jehovah’s Witnesses have been under pressure for years in Russia, where the dominant Orthodox Church is championed by President Vladimir Putin. Orthodox scholars have cast them as a dangerous foreign sect.

But Russia’s latest falling-out with the West, triggered by Moscow’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, spurred a more determined drive to push out “the enemy within”.

Christiansen’s lawyer said he planned to appeal the verdict.

More than 100 criminal cases have been opened against Jehovah’s Witnesses, and some of their publications are on a list of banned literature.

Yaroslav Sivulsky, a Jehovah’s Witness spokesperson, said the group was disappointed by the verdict.

Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesperson, said there had clearly been reasons for Christiansen’s arrest, but that he was unaware of the details of the case.

The group has about eight million active followers around the world and has faced court proceedings in several countries, mostly over its pacifism and rejection of blood transfusions.