Impacted the decision on the question of his launch. An attraction against the Supreme Court's determination was lodged earlier this month, with a response expected someday in the course of the summer. On four September, Kursk Regional Courtroom quashed Lgov Court’s resolution and sent the case again for a new consideration. They must be instantly and unconditionally released, all convictions quashed and all pending costs against them dropped. Although Christensen's five years behind bars is the longest any member of the religion has yet spent in a Russian jail on convictions stemming from working towards the religion, prison terms have lengthened previously 12 months seeing a number of people obtain eight-yr sentences. The European Union urged that Christensen be released “immediately and unconditionally.” In the same spirit, the United Nations has referred to as Russian authorities to launch all individuals who've been arrested for their peaceful religious convictions. The FSB claims that Christensen, who's married to a Russian citizen and has lived in Oryol for 10 years, was involved in organizing and management of the local religious organization, an concept the group strongly disputes. The group has around 140,000 adherents in Russia, the place as of Might 1 authorities had raided 1,755 houses of Jehovah’s Witnesses and pressed criminal expenses against 622. Ninety members remained in jail, the group stated.

Dennis Christensen gestures from inside a defendants’ cage throughout a break within the studying of his verdict at a court in the town of Oryol on February 6, 2019. - A Russian courtroom on February 6, 2019 sentenced a Danish Jehovah’s Witness to six years in prison for “extremism”, in the first conviction of its type since a 2017 law that outlawed the religious group. The Russian Orthodox Church has depicted the Jehovah’s Witnesses as a harmful overseas sect, allegations the group denies. Jehovah’s Witnesses have confronted persecution and harassment in trendy Russia since 2009, when a court docket in Rostov Area in southern Russia banned the local Jehovah’s Witnesses’ (JW) group and declared 34 of JW’s publications “extremist”. On 23 June 2020, the Lgovskiy District Court docket in the Kursk Region mitigated the remainder of Mr. Christensen’s sentence to a positive of 400,000 rubles ($5,759, U.S.). A decide in the Lgovskiy District Court docket in southwestern Russia on Tuesday launched Dennis Christensen from prison, three years into a six-12 months sentence.

On 23 June, the Lgovskiy District Court docket within the Kursk Region decided to grant early launch to Danish Jehovah’s Witness Dennis Christensen. And we will see a wave (of court docket processes) and I believe not solely in opposition to the Jehovah’s Witnesses”, mentioned Valery Borshchev. Already, his arrest has furthered fears that the Supreme Courtroom ruling will enable persecution of any Jehovah's Witness practicing his or her faith. And we will see a wave (of court docket processes). The information of Christensen's release comes a day after a court in the town of Prokopevsk sentenced 53-12 months-old Andrei Vlasov to seven years in prison after discovering him responsible of the same prices Christensen was discovered responsible of. Credo Press (23.05.2019) - On 23 Might, a panel of three judges of the Orel oblast courtroom left in drive the verdict of the decrease-standing Zheleznodorozhny district court docket by which citizen of Denmark Dennis Christensen was sentenced to six years in a penal colony of basic regime for active profession of the religion of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Nonetheless, last December, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated throughout his annual media Q&A session that branding the Jehovah’s Witnesses as extremists is “utter nonsense,” and promised to look into the prosecution of the group’s members.

However, that ruling was overturned by the Kursk Regional Courtroom after local prosecutors appealed the parole, insisting that Christensen had violated prison rules. Within the meantime, the prison authorities in Labour Camp No. 3 in Lgov placed him in a punishment cell for ten days despite his poor well being for alleged minor violations of prison rules, which he denied. The Jehovah's Witnesses' webpage stated on Could 24 that Christensen was released from a prison within the Oryol region after serving out his punishment. “Dennis Christensen and all Jehovah’s Witnesses persecuted for exercising their right to freedom of religion are prisoners of conscience and needs to be instantly and unconditionally launched. Yaroslav Sivulsky is the consultant of the European association of Jehovah’s witnesses. An attraction was lodged to the next court Monday, Sivulskiy mentioned, and the Danish Embassy in Moscow is sending a representative to analyze the matter. However, Mr. Aleksei Shatunov of the Kursk Regional Public Prosecutor’s Office filed an appeal demanding that the court docket ruling be canceled. The ruling, nonetheless, related only to the group's local religious chapters. In its unique ruling, the supreme court docket cited what it referred to as the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ “propaganda of exclusivity” in ruling to ban the group and dissolve its organisations.