{"id":5460,"date":"2021-06-01T22:41:07","date_gmt":"2021-06-01T19:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/?p=5460"},"modified":"2021-08-18T10:45:16","modified_gmt":"2021-08-18T07:45:16","slug":"russian-jehovahs-witness-found-guilty-of-extremism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/russian-jehovahs-witness-found-guilty-of-extremism\/","title":{"rendered":"Russian Jehovah&#8217;s Witness Found Guilty Of &#8216;Extremism&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">A Jehovah\u2019s Witness in the western Russian republic of Mari El has been found guilty of extremism and given a suspended 6 1\/2 year prison sentence.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_5461\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5461\" style=\"width: 897px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-5461\" src=\"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Clip.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"897\" height=\"550\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Clip.jpg 897w, https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Clip-768x471.jpg 768w, https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Clip-560x343.jpg 560w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 897px) 100vw, 897px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-5461\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ekaterina Pegasheva was held for more than four months in pretrial detention.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Ekaterina Pegasheva, who was convicted by the Gornomariskiy district court on June 1, denied the charge and vowed to appeal the ruling.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cThe only victims in this criminal case are me, my mother, [and] my elderly sick bedridden grandmother. We have suffered significant damage &#8212; property, physical, emotional, mental, as well as damage to our reputation,\u201d Pegasheva told the court before the verdict was issued.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cI am a law-abiding citizen of the Russian Federation. I did not call for violence. My conscience is clear before God, before the state, and before the people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses is a Christian denomination with an estimated 175,000 followers in Russia. In 2017, Russia\u2019s Supreme Court declared the group an extremist organization.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Since then, Russian law enforcement has raided the homes of more than 1,300 worshippers and over 400 have been either charged or convicted of extremism in a brutal crackdown that has swept up followers aged 19 to 90.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The European Association of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses estimates that between 5,000 to 10,000 of its members have fled Russia since the ban came into force.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The case against Pegasheva was opened in September 2019. According to the authorities, Pegasheva continued to preach her brand of Christianity despite the ban on the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In October 2019, police searched her home in Yoshkar-Ola, seizing books, videos, electronic devices, personal letters, and other documents. Her mother\u2019s home in Pirogovo, in the Kirov region, was also searched.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Pegasheva was held for more than four months in pretrial detention before spending more than a year under house arrest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Jehovah\u2019s Witness in the western Russian republic of Mari El has been found guilty of extremism and given a suspended 6 1\/2 year prison sentence. Ekaterina Pegasheva, who was convicted by the Gornomariskiy district&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5461,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5460","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=5460"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5462,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5460\/revisions\/5462"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}