Birobidzhan-based Tatyana Zagulina was handed a two-and-a-half year probation for reading the Bible

On April 1, 2021, Yuliya Tsykina, judge of the Birobidzhan District Court, found Tatyana Zagulina guilty of participating in the activities of a banned organization. She was sentenced to 2 years and 6 months of suspended imprisonment and 2 years of restriction of freedom.

Tatyana's religious convictions as a Jehovah's Witness were the only grounds for the verdict. It has not entered into force and can be appealed. The believer insists on her complete innocence.

Despite the absence of victims in Tatyana Zagulina's case, the prosecutor asked the court to send her to a general regime colony for 4 years.

A criminal case was opened against the 36-year-old mother of a minor child a year after her husband Dmitriy Zagulin was charged in another criminal case, also under an “extremist” article.

“I personally have never allowed not only statements, but even hints of the possibility of ethnic and religious hatred or the need to commit any illegal actions,” Tatyana said in her last plea. “It turns out that I am in the dock for the wrong reason, not because I committed some real crime and therefore dangerous to society, but for being a Christian, for being Jehovah's Witness. When FSB officers came to raid our home, I asked them what they were looking for. They answered: ‘Everything related to the Bible.’ It turns out they were looking not for something that could be really connected with extremism, but for something that is connected with faith in God."

The case against Tatyana Zagulina was initiated on February 6, 2020. It was investigated by the investigative department of the FSB of Russia for the Jewish Autonomous Region. The accused was under recognizance agreement for 400 days. After 6 months of investigation, on August 19, 2020, the case was brought to court.

The prosecution witness, an employee of the cafe where Tatyana and her friends held weddings and get-togethers with their children, confirmed in court that they only partied in the cafe, behaved “decorously and nobly, ate, drank tea, danced, no problems arose ". However, the prosecution tries to portray such get-togethers as meetings of a banned organization.

Another witness, a police officer Zvereva, noted in court that she had not heard any extremist calls from either Zagulina or any other Jehovah's Witness. According to her, Tatyana was a simple listener at worship sessions, and the meetings themselves were held peacefully, the topics of family and raising children were discussed.

In total, 19 criminal cases were initiated in the Jewish Autonomous Region against 23 Jehovah's Witnesses. Currently, 12 believers from Birobidzhan are forced to prove their innocence in court and defend their peaceful convictions.

In Russia, as in other countries, calls are regularly heard to stop the massive repression of Jehovah's Witnesses. Sociologist Massimo Introvigne, director of the International Center for the Study of New Religions (Italy), wrote about the members of this religion: “They are peaceful people who reject violence and have never used violence themselves. The only connection between Jehovah's Witnesses and violence is that they are victims of violence."