Orthodox Revenge - Sentence Roulette

In a judgement that was a chilling reminder of those given by Nazi judges in Germany .....

Russia's Supreme Court Judge Yuri Ivanenko Reads
The Decision Banning The Jehovah's Witnesses.

...... Jehovah's Witnesses were banned in Russia in 2017, after the justice ministry successfully argued that the group distributed pamphlets which incited hatred of other groups.

Subsequently in 2019, a Russian judge sentenced Dennis Christensen, a Danish Jehovah's Witness to six years in a penal colony. He had been in pretrial custody for 20 months, since his arrest in May 2017.

Dennis Christensen When Convicted And After 5 Years In A Penal Colony

His crime? 'Extremism'. He lead a bible reading session to his co-religionists (there an estimated 170,000 members in Russia), when he was arrested during a raid on a Jehovah’s Witness worship service by riot police, during which Christensen had given a sermon.

December 2018, President Vladimir Putin called the allegations of extremism "utter nonsense," and promised to look into the prosecution of church members. However the court in Oryol didn't apparently take the hint, and seemed more like those in the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin, where Jehovah's Witnesses were persecuted for their faith, facing arrests and deportation. 

Back then it was for defying the Communist state by being pacifists, and refusing to recognise any authority was higher than their version of God/Jehovah (much like the reasons the Nazi's persecuted them as well). Now, well it looks awfully like the Russian Orthodox Church was angry with the Jehovah’s Witnesses teachings that said that the Orthodox Church was in error in its teachings. 

It can be no coincidence that one of the Jehovahs witness pamphlets quoted the novelist Leo Tolstoy, as describing the doctrine of the Russian Orthodox Church as 'superstition and sorcery'.... an attack that they were unlikely to be sanguine about. So perhaps its no great a surprise to find that despite President Putin's promise to look in to it ..... Dennis Christensen was not released until May the 25th 2022, a period of over five years behind bars.

Dennis Christensen has stated publicly that despite all that happened to him, he has never regretted moving to Russia. To this day, he considers it the best decision of his life. He says that he still genuinely loves Russian culture and the Russian people, and that in prison, he fought his fear with the help of God, who was always with him "like he was with other imprisoned Jehovah’s Witnesses".

Dennis now lives in Denmark with his wife Irina, and his father. Irina has decided to stop talking to journalists as she has family still in Russia .... she and Dennis have been married more than 20 years (but wonder whether to count the stolen 5 years). 

NB: Sometimes I delay stories, until I finally see a story confirming the safety of the subject .... not that anyone reads them .... but you never know.