In Primorye Territory, the Third Criminal Case for Faith

On July 19, 2018, in the village of Razdolnoye (Primorsky Territory), armed masked law enforcement officers rudely broke into the homes of local residents who are suspected of practicing the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses. During the assault, law enforcement officers hit the 75-year-old landlord in the face. Shouting: "Lie down!" his hands were twisted behind his back.

When armed law enforcement officers broke into another apartment, there were at least seven people aged 70 or more, some of them disabled, together with the hostess. One woman had a seizure. An ambulance arrived at the scene and took the woman to intensive care.

Among others, investigators A.A. Sendzyuk and D.A. Shevchenko, FSB officer N.B. Belyaev, and Alexander Zhertovskoy, an employee of an unidentified law enforcement agency, participated in the operation against civilians. The case is being investigated by the Nadezhdinsky District Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee of Russia.

During the searches, phones, tablets, computers were seized from citizens. The detained citizens were taken for interrogation to the village of Volno-Nadezhdinskoye (Primorsky Territory). The interrogation dragged on until late at night.

This is the third criminal case for faith in the Primorsky Territory. The first case, against Valentin Osadchuk, is being investigated by the Investigative Department of the FSB of Russia in Vladivostok. The second case, against Dmitry Barmakin (sent to the pre-trial detention center until September 27, 2018), is being investigated by the Investigative Committee of Russia for the Pervorechensky District of Vladivostok.

Currently, criminal prosecution for faith, accompanied by rough searches and arrests of law-abiding citizens, occurs in 7 of the 9 regions of the Far Eastern Federal District, namely: in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), in the Amur, Magadan and Jewish Autonomous Regions , Primorsky (3), Khabarovsk and the Kamchatka Territory. Law enforcers mistakenly mistake the joint religion of citizens for participation in an extremist organization. Prominent public figures of Russia, as well as the Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation, have already drawn attention to this problem.