Jehovah’s Witness from Kemerovo Oblast sentenced to six years in a penal colony on extremism charges

Vitaliy Syrykh, a Jehovah’s Witness, has been sentenced to six years in a general-regime penal colony on charges of organising the activities of a banned religious association (Article 282.2, Part 1 of the Russian Criminal Code). Judge Aleksey Semerikov of the Kaltan District Court also banned him from organisational activity in public or religious associations and organisations for five years, and imposed an additional penalty of one year of restricted freedom.

Information about the verdict was published on the court’s website. A press release on the Kuzbass Investigative Committee’s Telegram channel, Sledkom Kuzbassa, indicates that the case concerns Vitaliy Syrykh.

According to the website Jehovah’s Witnesses: Legal Situation in Russia, state prosecutor Ye. A. Potokina had asked for eight years’ imprisonment.

Vitaliy Syrykh, 55, lives in Kaltan, a town in Kemerovo Oblast. A court placed him under house arrest in 2021 on charges of ‘participating in the activities of an extremist organisation’, but soon released him on a written undertaking not to leave his place of residence. The case was discontinued a year later.
However, the authorities opened a new criminal case against him in 2024, this time on charges of ‘organising the activities of an extremist organisation’. According to investigators, Vitaliy Syrykh took part, as an organiser, in the activities of the Kaltan Local Religious Organisation of Jehovah’s Witnesses.