Alexander Dolganov
On April 8, 2024, in the Avtozavodsky District Court of Tolyatti, the hearings in the case of 35-year-old Aleksandr Dolganov ended. In one session, Judge Anna Tokareva heard the closing arguments of the parties and the final statement of the defendant and immediately passed a sentence – 3 years of imprisonment.
The prosecution of the believer began in May 2023. Anatoliy Grekov, investigator of the Investigative Committee for the Samara Region, separated the case against Aleksandr from the criminal case against his fellow believer Aleksandr Chagan. For reading and discussing the Bible and Christian teachings, Dolganov was accused of participating in the activity of an extremist organization (Article 282.2(2) of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). His home and those of other believers were searched. Dolganov was placed in a temporary detention facility, and then under house arrest. Aleksandr said: "Due to the ban on leaving the apartment, using a mobile phone, the Internet and mail, I lost the opportunity to provide for my family, therefore this responsobility became a burden for my wife."
After two months of investigation, Dolganov's case went to court. At the hearing, the prosecution presented a standard set of evidence: hidden video recordings of peaceful worship services made by an undercover agent, the testimony of a secret witness and a psycho-religious expert study. The defense stated that the latter is inadmissible evidence, since it was obtained in violation of the law; the specialists who performed it — Lenar Galiev and Kirill Kirushin from Naberezhnye Chelny State Pedagogical University — did not have the required education, and therefore, did not have the right to conduct the expert study.
Galiev and Kirushin had previously conducted expert studies in the cases of other Jehovah's Witnesses from Tolyatti, who also unsuccessfully asked the court to exclude these materials from their cases. The undercover agent, a woman, had also previously participated in lawsuits against other believers from Tolyatti. Testifying in the Dolganov case, she did not hide her negative attitude towards Jehovah's Witnesses on religious grounds, and also admitted that she did not personally know the defendant and could not accuse him of anything specific.
In his final statement, Aleksandr said: "I have never hidden and will never hide my faith in the living God. I enjoy learning about the Creator, acquiring knowledge from the Scriptures, and sharing what I've learned with others. The videos provided by the prosecution do not contain calls for violence, the overthrow of the constitutional order, disrespect toward government officials, or the breakup of families, because all this is alien to me and my friends."
In the Samara Region, 10 believers have faced criminal prosecution, most of them have already been sentenced to various forms of punishment for their religion.
