Sergei Melnik
- Criminal Code
- Article 282.2 part 1, Russian Criminal Code
- Case category
- Extremism casesCases against Jehovah's Witnesses
- Verdict
- Imprisonment (general regime), Restriction of liberty
- Sentence
- 6 years
- Date of verdict
- 2021-09-22
- Region
- Volgograd Oblast
- City
- Volgograd
Recognition by human rights organisations
- Recognised as unlawfully deprived of liberty for exercising freedom of religionby Memorial: Support for Political Prisoners, 24 September 2021
This is the assessment of the organisation named above, not ours. FACTUM reports it with attribution and does not make its own.
Case summary
A Volgograd resident. He was detained on 16 May 2019 and taken into custody by court order on 19 May on charges of participation in the activities of an extremist organisation due to his involvement in the Jehovah's Witnesses community. Representatives of this community are prosecuted under extremist articles solely for religious activities: meetings, joint worship services, attracting new supporters. On 26 December, a preventive measure in the form of a ban on certain actions was chosen. On 10 December 2020, the court did not extend the ban to leave the house from 22:00 to 6:00.
23 September 2021 he was sentenced to six years in a general regime penal colony, taken into custody in the courtroom.
In December 2025, he was released from the penal colony.
Others charged under Article 282.2 part 1, Russian Criminal Code
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Source: this person’s record in the OVD-Info political persecution database
Published under CC BY 3.0. The criteria for treating a person as politically persecuted belong to OVD-Info; FACTUM relays their assessment and makes none of its own.
OVD-Info has been designated an «extremist» organisation in Russia — by decision of the Russian authorities, like other independent human rights and media projects.