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Russian authorities announced on Tuesday the opening of a criminal investigation against Jehovah’s Witnesses, a religious organization banned since 2017, for extremist activities after conducting searches in more than 20 regions, AFP reports.
The commission of inquiry, in charge of criminal investigations in Russia, said in a statement that it has opened a new investigation against Jehovah’s Witnesses for holding “conspiracy meetings” in an apartment in Moscow since June 2019, according to agerpres.ro .
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“Followers have studied religious literature and other information (…) that disseminates the teachings of Jehovah’s Witnesses,” the statement said, adding that members of the religious organization recruited other people.
A spokesman for Russia’s Jehovah’s Witnesses, Yaroslav Sivulski, told AFP it was “absurd”. “What they are doing is trying to give ordinary believers a dangerous air,” he added.
President Vladimir Putin said in 2018 that he “does not really understand why Jehovah’s Witnesses are being persecuted” in Russia, but judicial investigations against members of this religious community have continued.
“Nobody understands why Jehovah’s Witnesses are considered extremists. Not even the president does,” Sivulski said Tuesday.
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Jehovah’s Witnesses were banned in April 2017 by the Russian Supreme Court and their movement was declared “extremist” by the Ministry of Justice. Several followers of Jehovah’s Witnesses were sentenced to prison after the ban.
On Tuesday, Russian authorities also said they searched Jehovah’s Witnesses in Moscow and more than 20 regions of Russia with help from the Ministry of the Interior, the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the National Guard (Rosgvardia).
A video accompanying the statement from the commission of inquiry shows men dressed in black and hoods forcibly entering an apartment, then several bills, including dollars.
A movement founded in 1870 in the United States by Charles Russel, Jehovah’s Witnesses claim to be from Christianity and are considered to be the only faithful to original Christianity. They are often accused of sectarian drift
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