On Thursday, May 7, the “courts” of the occupied Crimea refused to change the preventive detention measure for political prisoner Sergey Filatov, sentenced to six years in prison, on house arrest.This was reported by “Krym.Realii”.
“Due to the pandemic and restrictive measures on the peninsula, as well as the high risk of coronavirus infection of prisoners in the pre-trial detention facilities, we decided to file a petition for a change of the preventive measure to a softer one: house arrest or personal recognizance. After a sentence, we didn’t know where the materials of the criminal case were for some time, so we sent the applications to two courts at once: the Dzhankoy district court and Supreme court of Crimea. However, unfortunately, in both institutions our arguments were not heard and they left Sergey in Simferopol pre-trial detention center,"-said lawyer Oleg Zakharchuk.
We want to remind that in November 2018 in Dzhankoy FSB officers conducted mass searches of people suspected of participating in the religious organization Jehovah's Witnesses, banned in Russia. The head of the local regional group of "Jehovah's Witnesses", "Sivash", Sergey Filatov, was detained. He is suspected of organizing an extremist community. The "Sivash" group was liquidated back in 2017. On March 5, the Dzhankoy District “court” sentenced Sergey Filatov to 6 years of imprisonment in a penal colony with a 1-year restraint of liberty for organizing and participating in the Jehovah's Witnesses cell.