For Immediate Release
February 13, 2002
(Russian)

Prosecution offers no new evidence in Russia's human rights test case

MOSCOW—The human rights test case involving Jehovah's Witnesses opened in Moscow yesterday, with scant evidence presented.

After six years of criminal investigation and legal proceedings, including a trial that lasted two years, the prosecutor, Tatyana Kondratyeva, presented as evidence a list of articles that had appeared in the internationally distributed journal The Watchtower, which is published by Jehovah's Witnesses, and photocopies of Biblical material considered at Witness meetings throughout the world.

Ms. Kondratyeva said she was unable to provide any specific evidence of wrongdoing by members of the congregations of Jehovah's Witnesses.

Defense counsel motions to dismiss the trial based on the violations of the European Convention on Human Rights were denied.

Defense counsel Artur Leontyev referred the court to the finding of the European Court at Strasbourg in a 1996 decision in favor of Jehovah's Witnesses (Manoussakis v. Greece): "The right to freedom of religion as guaranteed under the Convention excludes any discretion on the part of the State to determine whether religious beliefs or the means used to express such beliefs are legitimate."

At stake initially is the freedom of worship of 10,000 Jehovah's Witnesses in Moscow and then of the 120,000 members of the Witnesses' 400 registered congregations throughout Russia. The prosecution's drive to liquidate the Witnesses has triggered fears among human rights observers that this will have a domino effect as the government moves against other non-Orthodox faiths.

Ludmila Alekseyeva, of the International Helsinki Group in Moscow, commented: "Modern-day persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses has been carried on for six years. Surely it will not take another six years before justice triumphs."

Contact: Jaroslav Sivulskii, mobile phone: + (7) 8 902 682 8197
Paul Stevenson, mobile phone: (7-095) 104 3750