In the photo: Hasan Kogut with his wife outside the courthouse. 10 September 2020
Hasan Kogut, a believer from Beryozovsky, was handed a two and a half year suspended sentence for participating in meetings with fellow believers
Kemerovo RegionOn September 10, 2020, the Berezovsky City Court of Kemerovo region handed a guilty verdict to Hasan Kogut, a 37-year-old father of a minor child. The believer was sentenced conditionally to two-and-a-half years with a probation period of two years. He strongly denied the guilty charge of extremism, stating that he was convicted for his faith.
"30 states openly condemn the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses and hope that this misunderstanding will soon be over. I'm not going to give up my faith in Jehovah, and making me do it is a crime," Hassan Kogut said in a final statement to the court, stressing that he is not being tried for crimes but for religious beliefs.
Judge Elena Bigeza, having listened to the argumentation of the believer, sentenced him to suspended sentence, although the prosecutor asked for 2 years of colony for Kogut.
July 22, 2018 the house of a resident of Berezovsky Hassan Koghut was searched. But he was only detained on 6 February 2019, the same day that the regional FSB department opened a criminal case against him for involvement in extremist activities. Immediately after his arrest, Kogut was placed in a detention center for 2 days, and later - for 202 days under house arrest. The court then relaxed his restraining order until he signed a notice not to leave.
According to the case file, Hassan Koghut gathered with his fellow believers for religious meetings, "continuing" the activities of a legal entity, a banned religious organization. By doing so, a believer "committed a deliberate crime against the foundations of the constitutional order and security," the indictment said.
The trial of Hassan Kogut lasted more than a year. During that time, many witnesses testified that they had not heard a believer call to hatred, violence or anti-state slogans - none of which is listed in the legislation on countering extremist activity. The presence of extremism in Kogut's words analyzed during the court sessions was also denied by the expert Vadim Shiller from Kemerovo.
"The course of the process indicated that law enforcers act on the basis of misinformation about believers. For example, in her speech the state prosecutor stated that Jehovah's Witnesses invented the doctrine of hell as a place of torment for sinners, although among Christian religions it is the Witnesses who deny the existence of fiery hell. This nuance is an indicator of how law enforcement in general treats the facts, if we talk about the criminal cases against Jehovah's Witnesses," - commented on the sentence representative of the European Association of Jehovah's Witnesses Yaroslav Sivulsky.
The case of Hasan Kogut was separated from the case of other Berezovsky believers - Vadim Levchuk and Sergey Britvin, who were sent to the colony for 4 years by the court on September 2, 2020, based on similar charges.
