{"id":2946,"date":"2018-04-03T18:28:40","date_gmt":"2018-04-03T18:28:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/news\/2018\/04\/03\/trial-of-jehovahs-witness-adjourned-in-russia\/"},"modified":"2021-08-18T10:25:28","modified_gmt":"2021-08-18T07:25:28","slug":"trial-of-jehovahs-witness-adjourned-in-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/trial-of-jehovahs-witness-adjourned-in-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"Trial Of Jehovah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Witness Dennis Christensen Adjourned In Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

A preliminary hearing into a criminal case against Jehovah’s Witness Dennis Christensen, a 46-year old Danish citizen charged with extremism, was adjourned shortly after resuming in Russia’s central city of Oryol.<\/p>\n

Judge Aleksei Rudnev adjourned the hearing on April 3 after the defendant asked for additional time to get acquainted with all the materials in the case, including video and audio.<\/p>\n

Christensen was arrested in May 2017 and has been in pretrial detention since then.<\/p>\n

If convicted, he may face up to 10 years in prison.<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jehovah’s Witnesses have long been viewed with suspicion in Russia for their positions on military service, voting, and government authority in general.<\/p>\n

Freedom of religion is formally guaranteed in Russia but legislation sets out Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism as the country’s four traditional religions, and smaller denominations frequently face discrimination.<\/p>\n

In April 2017, the Supreme Court labeled the Jehovah’s Witnesses an extremist organization, ordering the seizure of its property in Russia and effectively banning worshipers from the country.<\/p>\n

Since then, there have been a growing number of reports of worshipers being targeted for harassment.<\/p>\n

Russia’s Memorial human rights center recognized Christensen as a political prisoner in July 2017.<\/p>\n

Human Rights Watch has urged Russian authorities to release Christensen, saying that he was exercising his right to practice his religion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A preliminary hearing into a criminal case against Jehovah’s Witness Dennis Christensen, a 46-year old Danish citizen charged with extremism, was adjourned shortly after resuming in Russia’s central city of Oryol. Judge Aleksei Rudnev adjourned…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-news","category-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2946"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5613,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2946\/revisions\/5613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}