Aleksey Ovchar and his wife on the day of the appeal hearing near the Kamchatka Territory Court

Aleksey Ovchar and his wife on the day of the appeal hearing near the Kamchatka Territory Court

Aleksey Ovchar and his wife on the day of the appeal hearing near the Kamchatka Territory Court

Unjust Verdicts

Court of Appeal in Kamchatka Upheld Verdict Against Aleksey Ovchar — Long Suspended Sentence

Kamchatka Territory

On April 22, 2025, the Kamchatka Territory Court upheld the verdict against Aleksey Ovchar. The believer will serve a 6-year suspended sentence. He does not consider himself guilty.

The verdict handed down in February 2025 was appealed. As the believer's lawyer emphasized, there is no corpus delicti in Ovchar's actions. In addition, a significant part of the materials presented as evidence of Aleksey's guilt does not relate to him at all.

Ovchar stated in his appeal: "The action, for which I was sentenced and punished, was a conversation on everyday and religious topics. During the conversation, my fellow believer and I sought to emotionally and spiritually support a woman who shares my religious beliefs. In our conversation, there were no calls for violence, the overthrow of the constitutional order, disrespect for the authority of the state or other actions of an extremist nature." He added that " declaring a legal entity extremist is not tantamount to banning a religion and does not prohibit believers from providing emotional and spiritual assistance to each other."

Willy Fautré, founder and director of the Brussels-based organization Human Rights Without Frontiers, previously noted: "Jehovah's Witnesses are the religious group that has been the most persecuted in Russia... Statistics about the magnitude of the repression are disturbing. Freedom of religion or belief is the cornerstone of all freedoms."

The Case of Ovchar in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy

Case History
In September 2022, the Investigative Committee initiated a criminal case against the Chechulin couple and Aleksey Ovchar for their faith. Later, Ovchar’s criminal case was made into a separate proceeding, and he was added to the Rosfinmonitoring list. In October 2024, the investigation resumed: Ovchar was interrogated, and he was placed under a recognizance agreement. Already a month later, the case went to court. In February 2025, the court gave Aleksey a 6-year suspended sentence, and in April of the same year, the court of appeal upheld this decision.
Timeline

Persons in case

Ovchar
Aleksey

Criminal case

Region:
Kamchatka Territory
Locality:
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy
Suspected of:
of "convening meetings, organizing collective religious presentations and meetings for worship, in accordance with the ideology of the religious association of Jehovah's Witnesses at these meetings... Conducted scheduled training with other persons on the tenets of the religious association "Jehovah's Witnesses"" (from the decision to initiate a criminal case)
Court case number:
42302300011000026
Initiated:
September 25, 2022
Current case stage:
the verdict entered into force
Investigating:
First Department for Investigating Especially Important Cases of the Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee for the Kamchatka Territory
Articles of Criminal Code of Russian Federation:
282.2 (1)
Court case number:
1-56/2025 (1-996/2024)
Court of First Instance:
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy City Court of the Kamchatka Territory
Judge of the Court of First Instance:
Aleksandr Kotkov
Case History
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