COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – A Danish adherent of the Jehovah’s Witnesses was released from a Russian prison on Tuesday (May 24) after serving five years on extremism charges as part of Moscow’s crackdown on the religious group, it said.
Dennis Christensen, a 49-year-old builder, was arrested at a prayer meeting in Oryol, 320km south of Moscow, in 2017. It was the first of dozens of arrests of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia.
Russia’s supreme court banned the Jehovah’s Witnesses as an extremist organisation in April 2017 and ordered it to disband nationwide. The group has around 140,000 adherents in Russia, where the crackdown has seen dozens of adherents detained and hundreds face charges.
In its original ruling, the supreme court cited what it called the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ “propaganda of exclusivity” in ruling to ban the group and dissolve its organisations.
Christensen was sentenced to six years in prison in 2019, with two years deducted for time spent in pretrial detention. He ultimately served five years of his sentence.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses, a pacifist Christian group based in the United States, have long come under suspicion in Russia, where the Orthodox Church is championed by President Vladimir Putin.
The Russian Orthodox Church has depicted the Jehovah’s Witnesses as a dangerous foreign sect, allegations the group denies.
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