Court of Appeal in Tatarstan Upheld the Sentence of Aleksey Gerasimov From Kazan - 6 Years in a Penal Colony

Aleksey Gerasimov, 43, one of Jehovah's Witnesses convicted for his faith, will be sent to a penal colony anyway. The decision to uphold the verdict against the believer was made on March 22, 2024 by a panel of judges of the Supreme Court of Tatarstan, chaired by Marsel Fakhriyev.

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

The verdict was appealed. As stated in the appeal of Gerasimov's lawyer, among other things, "the court of first instance did not apply the principle of the adversarial system and equality of the parties, since the presiding judge deprived the defense of the right to defend against false testimonies given by secret witnesses."

The point is that the investigation and the prosecutor built the line of accusation based on the false testimony of Aleksandr Komzolov, who attended meetings of Jehovah's Witnesses in the past. 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 Ilnar Izmailov, an employee of the Center for Counteracting Extremism, and A. Geniyatullin, an investigator of the Investigative Committee, who were involved in her husband's case.

Earlier, in his final statement to the court of first instance, 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 witness testimonies. During the entire trial, the prosecution did not indicate where, when, or in the presence of whom I said or did anything that incriminated me according to any article for extremism." 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.