Jehovah’s Witnesses and Muslims Face Up to Six Years’ Imprisonment
Four of the 16 Jehovah’s Witnesses on criminal trial in Taganrog and both the Muslim women whose criminal trial in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk is imminent face up to six years’ imprisonment each if convicted. All have been accused of organising an “extremist” religious community banned by Russian courts, Forum 18 News Service notes. The criminal cases against Yelena Gerasimova and Tatyana Guzenko, Muslims who read Said Nursi’s works, reached Krasnoyarsk’s Soviet District Court on 29 May, but are being transferred to a Magistrate’s Court. Meanwhile, several further Muslim women in Naberezhnyye Chelny have been issued warnings for allegedly attending an “underground madrassah”, a fellow Muslim in the city told Forum 18. Law enforcement agents “are harassing us on the quiet”, one Muslim complained to Forum 18. “We are not left alone.”
The long-running criminal trial continues in Taganrog in southern European Russia of 16 members of the local Jehovah’s Witness community which was declared “extremist”. The trial has reached its 61st hearing in 14 months. A new criminal case has reached court in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk against two Muslim women allegedly involved in the prohibited “extremist” organisation “Nurdzhular”, Forum 18 News Service has learned. Four of the Taganrog defendants and both the Krasnoyarsk defendants face up to six years’ imprisonment each if convicted.
Meanwhile, four Muslims in Naberezhnyye Chelny express their determination to appeal to the highest level against their “extremism” convictions for studying the works of the late Turkish Muslim theologian Said Nursi, despite persistent harassment by law enforcement agents and the imposition of further warnings.
More than 40 Russian translations of Nursi’s works and a biography of him, as well as numerous Jehovah’s Witness publications, have been ruled “extremist” by various courts and added to the Justice Ministry’s Federal List of Extremist Materials. Russia’s Supreme Court outlawed “Nurdzhular”, a purported “extremist” organisation of Nursi followers, in April 2008. Muslims who study Nursi’s writings insist that the group does not exist (see F18News 12 March 2014 forum18.org).