OREANDA-NEWS. The court in Sochi (Russia) placed two members of the organization «Jehovah's Witnesses» – Yuri Loginsky and Yuri Moskalev – under house arrest for a month. This was reported on Friday, October 26, by the online media «Caucasian Knot».

A day earlier, on March 25, the press service of the Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Krasnodar Territory reported, that a criminal case was opened against four residents of Sochi aged 48 to 56 years under the article on the involvement of citizens in the activities of an extremist organization. According to the online publication «OVD-Info», in addition to Yuri Loginsky and Yuri Moskalev, the defendants in this case were Vladimir Deshko and Tatiana Velizhanina.

According to investigators, all of them in the period from December 2018 to March 2020 promoted the activities of «Jehovah's Witnesses» and «recruited a local resident to become a member of an extremist organization». It is expected, that the court will choose a preventive measure against Deshko and Velizhanina on March 26.

In 2017, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation recognized the «Management Center of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia» as an extremist organization, liquidated it and banned the «Jehovah's Witnesses» from operating in the territory of the Russian Federation. Since then, 52 followers of this religious association have been imprisoned in Russia.