On May 3, 2018, the St. Petersburg City Court ruled: "The decision of the Sestroretsky District Court of December 7, 2017 to leave unchanged, the appeal is dismissed." With this decision, the city court of St. Petersburg legalized the seizure of foreign property located in the village of Solnechnoye near St. Petersburg. The seizure of such a large and expensive property was a direct consequence of the decision of the Supreme Court of Russia to liquidate and ban the activities of the Administrative Center of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia.
"We did not observe any adversarial proceedings in the process at all," Yaroslav Sivulsky of the European Association of Jehovah's Witnesses shared his impressions of the trial, "The judges did not ask any questions, did not specify any circumstances in the case. They simply listened to the arguments of the defense, there was no debate of the parties. They retired to a five-minute meeting and returned with a ready-made solution. That is, in five minutes, the property worth two billion rubles was transferred to the state. It was noticeable that the judge knows the decision in advance and conducts the process along this path.
Artur Leontiev, a lawyer who represented the Pennsylvania Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society in court, had a similar feeling: "A number of signs allow us to make such an assumption, because back in 2016, somehow there was an entry in Rosreestr that this complex is planned to be withdrawn for state or municipal needs. Interestingly, even before the start of this process, information appeared in the media that one of the state institutions had already submitted an application for this complex to be transferred to them. that the decision had already been made in advance."
Artur Leontiev adds: "This decision in itself, it has nothing to do, strictly speaking, to the law, because, in general, the institution of protecting private property rights, it is completely trampled. As a matter of fact, no one today can feel protected, even if he diligently complies with the law, all the requirements of the authorities. And it turns out that if the attitude towards it changes for some reason on the part of the authorities, then you can always come up with something, in some interesting way interpret the norms of the law and also the facts, and come to the conclusion that is needed at a given time.
Richard Devine, vice president of the Watch Tower Society, who testified in court, says: "I think any unbiased person would agree that the real estate in Solnechnoye belongs to us legally and that this property was, in fact, stolen by the Russian authorities. The decision was predictable, so we are not discouraged. We are pleased that we were able to prepare a solid basis for applying to the European Court of Human Rights."
Believers have mixed feelings. Here is how Yaroslav Sivulsky expressed them: "We look positively even at what has happened now, in the context of the fact that by doing so we understand that we are on the right path, since Jesus said that I was persecuted, and you will be persecuted, I was hated, and you will be hated. There was no reason to hate Jesus, no reason to hate and persecute Jehovah's Witnesses. And we are confident that in due time God will restore justice to all his faithful servants."