A 47-year-old member of Jehovah’s Witness, Sergei Filatov, has been sentenced to 6 years in prison by a Russian court in annexed Crimea.
He, a father of four, was convicted for being part of the group which was outlawed by Russian authorities in 2017 and labeled an extremist organization.
Filatov, who moved from continental Ukraine where the Jehovah’s Witnesses are legal to Dhankoy to take care of his ill daughter, received support from Crimean Solidarity, a rights group with members in Crimea and other parts of Ukraine.
The Dzhankoy District Court stated on March 5 that Filatov was found guilty of continuing the activities of the Jehovah’s Witness branch despite its ban.
Since March 2014, Crimea has been under Moscow’s control after Russia forcibly annexed the peninsula, deploying troops and holding a referendum.
Jarrod Lopes, a New York-based spokesman for Jehovah’s witness, expressed his concern, saying;
“He is the first one of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Crimea to be convicted for so-called extremist activity.
“This bleak development in Crimea is the latest example of Russia exporting its patently extreme religious intolerance.”
Filatov is the first member of the religious organization to be sentenced in Russia-annexed Crimea, and he is the 30th Jehovah’s Witness convicted in modern Russia and Crimea since 2017, ten of whom have received prison sentences.