Russia jails Dane for six years in Jehovah's Witnesses purge

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

WORLD NEWS FEBRUARY 6, 2019 / 4:37 AM / UPDATED AN HOUR AGO

Russia jails Dane for six years in Jehovah's Witnesses purge

Andrew Osborn
4 MIN READ

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian court on Wednesday found a Danish adherent of the Jehovah’s Witnesses guilty of organizing a banned extremist group and jailed him for six years in a case critics condemn as crushing religious freedom.

Armed police detained Dennis Christensen, a 46-year-old builder, in May 2017 at a prayer meeting in Oryol, some 200 miles (320 km) south of Moscow after a court in the region outlawed the local Jehovah’s Witnesses a year earlier.

Russia’s Supreme Court later ruled the group was “extremist” and ordered it to disband nationwide. Christiansen’s detention, Russia’s first extremism-related arrest of a Jehovah’s Witness, foreshadowed dozens more.

The court in the city of Oryol on Wednesday found Christiansen guilty after a long trial, his lawyer, his wife and a representative for the Jehovah’s Witnesses told Reuters.

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Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-politics-religion/russia-jails-dane-for-six-years-in-jehovahs-witnesses-purge-idUSKCN1PV0W2

[Act_of_Reparation]

1. Nothing exposes the weakness of your position like arresting your opponents.

The Patriarch should try having a few bake sales or pizza parties instead. That's how we win converts here in the Land of the Free.