Moscow Court Jails Jehovah’s Witnesses After a Bible Pamphlet Was Offered to Comfort a Mourner

A Moscow court has sent two Jehovah's Witnesses to a penal colony for five years each after they comforted a woman who said she was in mourning. The woman was an FSB informant. The evidence was two years of secretly recorded Bible talk.

That verdict, handed down on 26 August 2026 by the Simonovsky District Court and reported by Reuters on 1 September, is the starting point of a Global Human Rights Taskforce special report issued on 4 September 2026.

Zaur Murtuzov, 49, a logistics specialist, and Darya Petrochenko, 34, a lawyer and translator, received colony terms. Four other women received compulsory labour of up to four years. Petrochenko told the court she had asked nothing of the stranger and had caused no harm to her or to the constitutional order. About 120 people came to hear the sentence.

The Taskforce does not treat the case as a one-off. It maps nine years of the same method: the April 2017 Supreme Court ban that liquidated 395 Witness organisations as extremist, then dawn raids, informant recordings, and Criminal Code Article 282.2. Worship is the charge. Violence is not.

The numbers, as of early September 2026

Official Jehovah's Witnesses monitors (jw.org and jw-russia.org), checked against Reuters, Novaya Gazeta Europe and Forum 18, show:

• 978 people prosecuted under Article 282.2 since 2017

• 547 have already spent time behind bars

• 161 to 174 now in prison in Russia and occupied Crimea

• About 2,390 home searches and more than 1,000 combined years of prison time

• More than 282 Witnesses imprisoned worldwide; Russia holds most of them

Elderly believers are in the cells. Anna Safronova of Astrakhan is serving six years, the longest term given to a woman since the ban, and has passed 1,500 days in a colony. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention recorded reports she was pressed to recant.

The law Russia is breaking

Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights the report cites Article 18 (religion), Article 9 (liberty), Article 19 (expression), Articles 21 and 22 (assembly and association), and Articles 26 and 27 (equality and minority faith). The UN Human Rights Committee has already found Russia in violation in Kalin, Yurlov, Pavlenko and, in 2026, Vilitkevich. In June 2026 the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, in Maletskov and 25 Others, called the detention of 26 Witnesses arbitrary and ordered their release.

In June 2022 the European Court of Human Rights, in Taganrog LRO and Others v. Russia, ruled the nationwide ban unlawful and told Russia to drop the cases and free every imprisoned Witness. Russia refused. The sentences have continued.

The Russian Constitution is not a foreign text. Article 14 says the state is secular and religious associations are equal. Article 28 guarantees the right to profess a faith alone or with others and to spread religious views. Article 29 forbids forcing anyone to recant. Article 15 says treaties Russia has joined are part of its legal system.

The older pattern

In April 1951, Operation North deported about 9,500 Witnesses from Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic republics to Siberia. Memorial put the death rate among the newly dumped near 20 percent. The charge then was anti-Soviet activity. The charge now is extremism. The conduct -- meetings, literature, refusal to bear arms -- is the same. Russia rehabilitated the group in the 1990s and registered it in 1992. In 2017 it put the same people back in the dock.

What the Taskforce is asking

The report condemns the Ministry of Justice, the FSB, prosecutors and the courts that keep applying Article 282.2 to prayer. It calls on the UN Human Rights Council, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, the Human Rights Committee, OSCE/ODIHR, sanctions authorities and asylum states to treat non-compliance as an open file. It asks Russia to release the prisoners, strike Witnesses from the extremists and terrorists financial list, and return seized property.

Travel 4: Do not go

The Taskforce issues a Level 4 travel advisory for the Russian Federation, in line with the U.S. State Department Do Not Travel notice still in force in 2026. The grounds are the war and drone strikes deep inside Russia, the record of wrongful detention of foreigners, and laws that can turn a private Bible discussion into a criminal case. For Jehovah's Witnesses and anyone from a community already labelled extremist, the advice is absolute: do not enter.

Download the full report

GHRT_Russia_Jehovahs_Witnesses_Report_2026.docx (1).pdf

Download PDF • 298KB

The full Global Human Rights Taskforce special report -- GHRT Report No. 2026-RUS-JW-09, dated 4 September 2026 -- sets out the tables, treaty citations, constitutional articles, Soviet-era record and source list. Attach the Word file from site Media so readers can download the complete document from this post.

A cemetery card that offered hope should not be an exhibit in a criminal trial. Release the prisoners. End the ban.