on its website Tuesday<\/strong><\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\nRussia outlawed the nonconformist Christian denomination as \u201cextremist\u201d in 2017 and has since subjected thousands of worshippers to police raids, harassment and up to eight years of imprisonment.<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s Supreme Court binds law enforcement authorities to provide concrete evidence for the worshippers\u2019 \u201ccriminal intent,\u201d \u201cextremist motives\u201d and \u201cprior collusion\u201d \u2014 justifications for criminal prosecution that have been criticized as arbitrary.<\/p>\n
The organization said the ruling poses \u201cnew challenges\u201d for authorities to open criminal cases, search residences or \u201cdetain a person simply because he or she professes the religion of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses or meets with another at a worship service.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cInvestigators will now have to justify the wording often used in indictment papers against Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
The Supreme Court\u2019s plenum ruled that joint prayers among members of banned religious organizations \u201cconsisting exclusively in the exercise of their right to freedom of conscience and freedom of religion, including through individual or joint profession of religion\u2026 do not contain elements of extremism.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses in Russia noted that the country\u2019s courts are under the obligation to \u201cconsider\u201d the Supreme Court ruling when considering appeals.<\/p>\n
The group said it \u201ceagerly anticipates\u201d how the Oct. 28 Supreme Court plenum ruling will affect the release of its members currently held in custody.<\/p>\n
In its original 2017 \u201cextremist\u201d ruling, the Russian Supreme Court accused the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses of \u201cpropaganda of exclusivity\u201d and signs of violating public safety.<\/p>\n
The Soviet Union had exiled thousands of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses, known for door-to-door preaching and an alternative interpretation of the Bible, to Siberia for anti-communist activities and their refusal to serve in the military.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Russia\u2019s Supreme Court has banned the criminal prosecution of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses for joint worship, potentially putting an end to the law enforcement practice of jailing believers for prayer sessions. The ruling could also affect the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5897,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5896","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\/5896","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=5896"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5901,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5896\/revisions\/5901"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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