{"id":6046,"date":"2022-02-05T13:07:32","date_gmt":"2022-02-05T10:07:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/?p=6046"},"modified":"2022-02-21T12:33:01","modified_gmt":"2022-02-21T09:33:01","slug":"siberian-jehovahs-witness-jailed-despite-prosecution-ban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/siberian-jehovahs-witness-jailed-despite-prosecution-ban\/","title":{"rendered":"Siberian Jehovah\u2019s Witness Jailed Despite Prosecution Ban"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">A Siberian court jailed a Jehovah\u2019s Witness on Wednesday despite a top Russian court\u2019s recent ban on prosecuting worshippers for joint prayers, the religious organization said.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6047\" src=\"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/imgs.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1360\" height=\"765\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/imgs.jpg 1360w, https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/imgs-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/imgs-300x169.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1360px) 100vw, 1360px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Anatoly Gorbunov, 64, was found guilty of extremism and sentenced to six years in a penal colony in the Krasnoyarsk region.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Prosecutors had requested an eight-year sentence for Gorbunov, the son of Soviet citizens declared \u201cenemies of the people\u201d who were exiled to Siberia and rehabilitated after the collapse of the U.S.S.R.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cNow Anatoly was subjected to groundless repressions for his beliefs,\u201d the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses in Russia said on its website.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Investigators, it added, accused Gorbunov of organizing \u201cdiscussions with fellow believers of the Christian way of life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses in Russia stressed that prosecutors presented \u201cnot a single fact\u201d proving Gorbunov\u2019s guilt during hearings that continued for more than a year.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Several recordings of religious meetings and Bible discussions contained \u201cno calls for violence, inciting hatred or other illegal actions,\u201d the group said.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">A secret witness testified that he saw Gorbunov once \u201cand did not hear anything extremist from him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cThis allegedly was the organization of the activities of a banned religious organization,\u201d the group said.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Russia\u2019s Supreme Court ruled in November 2021 that joint prayers among members of banned religious organizations \u201cdo not contain elements of extremism.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The ban led to the first acquittal of a Jehovah\u2019s Witness on extremism charges that month.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Russia 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<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Siberian court jailed a Jehovah\u2019s Witness on Wednesday despite a top Russian court\u2019s recent ban on prosecuting worshippers for joint prayers, the religious organization said. Anatoly Gorbunov, 64, was found guilty of extremism and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6047,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6046","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\/6046","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=6046"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6048,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6046\/revisions\/6048"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}