Biography
In September 2021, a court in Volgograd sentenced four civilians to real prison terms for believing in Jehovah God. One of them is Igor Egozaryan.
Igor was born in 1965 in Volgograd in a simple working-class family. He has a younger sister. As a child, he was fond of music, independently mastered the guitar and performed in an amateur music group at school evenings. After graduating from school, he worked as a shoemaker, builder and electrician.
In the early 1990s, thanks to his mother, Igor first became acquainted with the teachings of the Bible. He was struck by its logic and simplicity.
Igor's relatives are outraged by the unfair sentence passed on him only because of his religious views. Igor's mother, who is already over 80, is especially worried. When the believer was thrown behind bars, the elderly woman lost the much-needed support of her son.
Case History
In the spring of 2019, the Investigative Committee initiated a criminal case against Jehovah’s Witnesses in Volgograd. Sergey Melnik, Igor Yehozaryan, Valeriy Rogozin, and Denis Peresunko were charged with organizing the activity of an extremist organization; the last two were also charged with financing the activity of an extremist organization. They spent between 5 and 7 months in a pretrial detention center. The lawyers drew the judge’s attention to numerous procedural violations by the investigation. Some witnesses stated that their testimony had been falsified. Secret witnesses were questioned anonymously — according to their own statements, they feared for their life and health. In September 2021, the court sentenced the 4 believers to prison terms ranging from 6 years to 6 years and 5 months. In March 2022, the court of appeal upheld the verdict. In December 2025, Yehozaryan and Melnik were released; in April 2026, Rogozin completed his sentence. The last of the four defendants, Denis Peresunko, was released in June 2026.
