Two 74-year-old Jehovah’s Witnesses have been jailed in Russia following a trial that relied on testimony from an undercover informant who infiltrated their religious meetings, according to a spokesperson for the faith group.
New York-based spokesman Jarrod Lopes said the men — Valeriy Knyazev and Indus Talipov from the city of Izhevsk — are now the oldest among the 175 Jehovah’s Witnesses imprisoned in Russia and Russian-occupied Crimea.
Russia has banned Jehovah’s Witnesses since 2017 after designating the group an “extremist organisation.” Since then, nearly 900 members have been prosecuted, Lopes said. The country’s religious landscape is dominated by the Russian Orthodox Church, which maintains strong ties to President Vladimir Putin.
Lopes said the recent trial, which resulted in three-year sentences for both defendants, relied on secret testimony from an informant known only by the pseudonym “Lozhkin.”
He alleged that Lozhkin is part of an expanding network of undercover FSB agents who pose as interested Bible students, attend worship gatherings for months or even years, secretly record conversations, and later provide evidence used to convict members of the group.
According to Lopes, at least 30 cases against Jehovah’s Witnesses have involved testimony from such informants.
