After serving the full term of imprisonment in Russia, 53-year-old Serhiy Filatov — a native of the Kherson region who lived in occupied Crimea — was released. He was convicted for participation in the religious organization “Jehovah’s Witnesses”, which the Russian Federation recognized as “extremist”.
This was reported by the portal “Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia”, QIRIM MEDIA reports.
Filatov moved to Dzhankoy from the Kherson region. In 2018, Russian security forces opened a criminal case against him, accusing him of organizing the activities of an “extremist organization”.
On March 5, 2020, an occupation court handed down a sentence — six years of imprisonment in a general-regime colony. After the verdict was announced, the man was taken into custody. He served part of the sentence in a pre-trial detention center, where one day of stay was counted as one and a half days in the colony, which shortened the actual length of imprisonment.
During his sentence, courts repeatedly denied Filatov parole and the substitution of the remaining term with forced labor. At the same time, according to his fellow believers, recently he was held in the colony under eased conditions of detention.
Earlier it was reported that the RF added the deputy head of the Kherson regional Mejlis of the Crimean Tatars Nasrulla Seydaliyev to the list of “extremists and terrorists” and illegally transported him to the Republic of Altai.