The last word of the defendant Alexey Kupriyanov in Kovrov

 Russia

 

The last word of the defendant Alexey Kupriyanov in Kovrov

September 15, 2023

Vladimir region

The believer stated in court: "The state prosecutor was not interested in any specific socially dangerous actions, but whether I am a Jehovah's Witness. The accusation is based only on the fact that I am a believer and that I believe in Jehovah. Your Honor, this is a trial of faith!" He concluded his last word with a poem.

Transcript of the court session in the Kovrov City Court of the Vladimir region dated 09/15/2023 in the case 1-21/2023 (1-425/2022) on the accusation of Kupriyanov Alexey Vyacheslavovich of committing a crime under Part 2 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.

Kupriyanov Alexey Vyacheslavovich:

Your Honor! First of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to you for your respect, open-mindedness and desire to understand the essence of a new issue for everyone in the context of criminal law.

Believe me, these are not formal words. Not every judge can withstand more than 20 petitions, more than 500 sheets of applications and so many people present at the meetings. It was obvious that you were reading through the submitted documents in order to sort out this "tangle" of contradictory and absurd accusations. I was struck by your memory when you corrected me for re-reading the document that the prosecutor announced six months ago. This assured me that you remembered my arguments regarding the defense. It is safe to say that with such a mountain of argumentation and research of documents, you are now the greatest expert on Jehovah's Witnesses in the Vladimir region… Listening to audio files of divine services, reading letters from my fellow believers to our fellow countrymen and reviewing other materials gave you an understanding of the full picture of my religion.

I am grateful to my wife for being a real helper and rear for me all this time. Over the 30 years of our life together, she and I have learned and rechecked the biblical truth many times, raised a son, saw the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, the Caucasus Mountains, survived the death of my father, the pandemic, my imprisonment in jail and this process. You even learned to drive for me. Thank you for everything. Thank you that our love and faith have become even stronger.

I thank my lawyer Irina Vladimirovna for understanding and support. We have almost a year of proceedings under our belt. We saw two judges, six prosecutors, four secretaries and even four interns at court sessions. You have already heard the last two words from me in court. It was nice to see how you actually get into the taste of the case without a material incentive and you are pleased to defend an innocent person, how you discuss with other lawyers the absence of any legality in the further detentions of my co-religionists in our and other regions.

I am also grateful to Secretary Anastasia Mikhailovna for her good attitude and help in solving various issues.

It was clear how over the past 11 months, everyone in court — from the guards at the entrance to the building and ending with those who attended the hearings — changed their attitude towards us… Despite the severity of the article on which I am being judged, there were no guards at the meetings, since everyone understands perfectly well that we are peace-loving people. […]

Many thanks to my co-workers who took time off from work and organized their affairs so as to be here. This is Christian love in practice. […]

Your Honor, I sincerely regret that you and I personally did not look through one of the most understandable and easy-to-read modern translations of the Bible, to which the prosecution referred so much. Believe me, it was not for nothing that in 2019 it was released in more than 180 languages with a circulation of over 235 million copies. [...] This translation is not just read by so many people on our planet in 239 countries and island territories. He is very understandable to the modern reader and brings the Word of God right to the heart.

One of the most difficult trials in the pre-trial detention center was that for about five months I was forbidden to pronounce the name of God "Jehovah" aloud. Imagine my feelings when in the office of the regional FSB over the desk of one of the officers I saw a quote from the prayer "Our Father" with the request of Jesus to sanctify the name of God, and on the safe in the same office — an attached letter written by a child's hand, with the use of the name "Jehovah".

For me, the Bible is like the light of headlights on a dark forest road. The light does not remove pits or fallen trees, but helps to see these obstacles. Imagine how nice it is to drive along this road with light. It is a pity that sometimes many people read the instructions when everything is already broken, and the Bible — when everything has already been lived.

I remember how we all experienced difficulties for quite a long time while the bridge over the railway was being rebuilt in our city. But the fact that we saw concrete actions of the builders helped us to live with hope. Now the Bible gives me hope, and this hope helps me to live. I read the Bible and understand that more than 90% of the prophecies recorded in it have already been fulfilled. I check everything carefully, and my faith becomes more and more grounded and reasonable.

During almost a year of proceedings, we could see how much everything that Jehovah's Witnesses teach and how they live is based on the Bible. And this can be seen by at least one criterion, which is in the accusation. What do you think, dear fellow countrymen, why should I and my fellow believers, without any material incentive, spend part of my life going and telling others about what I learned from this book? And this is especially after the law enforcement agencies are vying to earn "stars" by watching you. For me, fulfilling the command of Jesus Christ from the Gospel of Matthew 28:19 — "Go and teach all nations" — is a manifestation of love for Jesus and your neighbors.

Your Honor, our acquaintance with you began at the trial as a measure of restraint with an argument that you have hardly heard before — an argument that shocked me at the time. It turns out that the Auschwitz camp was created in the early 30s of the last century specifically for Jehovah's Witnesses. In total, about 10 thousand Jehovah's Witnesses passed through this and other camps and about 2 thousand died or were executed there. In confirmation of this, on September 18, 1999, a memorial plaque was installed on the wall of the former Sachsenhausen concentration camp in memory of the 890 Jehovah's Witnesses imprisoned here. But what were they accused of? Some will be surprised that Jehovah's Witnesses were accused of spreading communism. In the book "Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust" it is written as follows: "Jehovah's Witnesses refused to participate in violence or the use of military force. The witnesses firmly adhered to the position of neutrality, so they did not vote for Hitler and did not say "heil Hitler"."

Let's go back to our country. The persecution of people who in Soviet times were already subjected to unjustified persecution by the state because of false accusations and then in 1992 were recognized by the same State as victims of political repression is today nothing more than a crime against their own people. If we were so dangerous, we would not have been registered in 240 countries and would not have been registered in Russia for more than 25 years.

President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin said the following at a meeting of the Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation on December 11 , 2018: "About Jehovah's Witnesses… It is true that we should treat representatives of all religions equally, but still we need to take into account the country and the society in which we live. However, this does not mean at all that we should enroll representatives of religious communities in some destructive, let alone terrorist organizations. Of course, this is complete nonsense, we need to deal with it carefully, here I agree with you… Jehovah's Witnesses are also Christians, I don't really understand why they should be persecuted either" (kremlin.ru/events/president/news/59374 ).

On February 9, 2022, during a meeting of judges of courts of general jurisdiction and arbitration courts, Chairman of the Supreme Court Vyacheslav Lebedev stressed that religious rites and ceremonies cannot be considered extremist crimes. He referred to the resolution of the Plenum of the Supreme Court No. 32 of October 28, 2021 "On Amendments to some Resolutions of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation on criminal cases."

I would like to emphasize that it was this Plenum that was heard so often at our meetings, it was this Plenum that focused on stopping the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses so that the constitutional rights of believers were respected in our country. After all, the Constitution of the Russian Federation says that it is my right to profess this or that faith, and no one has the right to interfere in it, and even more so to persecute it.

Speaking about the unjustified persecution of people for their beliefs, President Vladimir Putin said the following words (they were published in the Kommersant edition of November 2, 2018): "Unfortunately, we face similar practices in many regions of the world, the planet, including, unfortunately, in the post-Soviet space. At the same time, both cave nationalism and Russophobia are used. Shameless, gross interference in church life is being carried out. Such a policy is fraught with serious consequences, it is dangerous! I am convinced that life will put everything in its place, because it is impossible to force people to go against their faith, their traditions, family pedigree, in the end, against truth, justice and just common sense!" [...] The President also once said that "who does not remember the past, he has no future".

In the Soviet Union, since 1925, the Orthodox Church has suffered severe persecution. Many churches were destroyed or used for non-religious purposes. Although people could no longer gather in church, does this mean that they stopped believing, celebrating holidays, using the attributes of the church and talking about God and the Bible? No. And, as we know, a lot of things were done by them stealthily. Can we say that they are extremists or that they have continued the activities of the church? No, they did only what their conscience and faith prompted them to do.

All over the world, Jehovah's Witnesses are known as kind and peace-loving citizens. The OSCE, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, the Committee of Ministers of Europe, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, observers of the EU Parliamentary Assembly, the EU Foreign Policy Service, the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation, the Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation, many prominent public figures of Russia — all of them condemned the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia.

"The continuation of the activities of the MRO closed by the court" — this is the essence of the accusation. The MRO was closed for the fact that a "higher-level" organization distributed publications included in the FSEM list. As we saw in almost a year of research, no one else distributed these publications. In the protocols of the MRO of G. Kovrov for 2016, we saw that all believers are encouraged to use only the Bible in their sermons.

Even if we close our eyes to the legitimate decision of the European Court of Human Rights, which overturned this illegal decision, I want to explain the above with the help of an example about a cook who loved to cook. The cook cooked at home, with friends, at weddings, parties and on various holidays. It was his favorite thing to do. Friends gave him advice to open his own restaurant or cafe. The cook did so. The competitors didn't like it. And different services began to come — firefighters, sanitary inspection, tax and so on. If a legal entity was closed, the cafe was also closed. What do you think, will the cook give up his favorite thing or will he continue to cook at home and with friends? He cooks the same way, according to the same recipes, from the same products, except only for the place — instead of a cafe, he cooks at home or with friends, as before registration. Will someone say that he is reviving the activities of a cafe or a legal entity? It would be wrong to attribute this to him, since the registration of a legal entity and the type of activity were tied to a specific place that was banned. Therefore, this cook did not break the law. And there are no people who would complain.

"Not of interest to the investigation", "the circle of victims has not been determined" — these are the most common quotes from my criminal case. And this is after the prosecution and I have investigated the activities of Jehovah's Witnesses not since 2017, but over the past 25 years!

With the same success, I think, you can accuse everyone here on the basis of an indictment against our leader and organizer. By "our" I mean Jesus, and by "everyone" I mean those who consider themselves Christians of any denomination.

After all, just think about it: Jesus Christ criticized the dogmas and traditions of his time and taught only according to the Bible… He did not celebrate some holidays the way his fellow tribesmen did, for example Saturday. He commanded his followers to preach, not to take up arms. He kept a secret, especially in the last year of his life on earth.

Do you know what Emperor Nero accused the early Christians of? That they are enemies of the state. Do you know how they were tested? They were given some blood to drink because they knew that in the Bible there is a law for Christians "not to use blood." Agree, it's been about 2000 years, and the charges are like a carbon copy?

Even after questioning me and the prosecution witnesses, it was clear that the state prosecutor was not interested in any specific socially dangerous actions, but whether I was a Jehovah's Witness. The accusation is based only on the fact that I am a believer and that I believe in Jehovah. Your Honor, this is a trial of faith! And after all, these accusations are not being made in Afghanistan, not in North Korea and not in the region of Palestine!

Your Honor, any punishment is carried out with a specific purpose — to correct the offender, to show that certain actions or omissions are unacceptable and condemned by society and the law. And this is right and fair. But I don't understand exactly how I should improve. What should I do?

Thus, I was driven into the zugzwang position, as chess players say: No matter what I do as a Jehovah's Witness, I will still commit a "crime". One way out is to give up faith.

But there is something in life that we cannot give up under any circumstances. How can you give up loving parents? How can we give up our children, whom we love and who love us? Or from our wives or husbands, who throughout their entire life together faithfully support us in sorrow and in joy? The answer is obvious: no way! How can you give up God?

Your Honor, in the nine months of our acquaintance, I have seen that you, as a professional in your field, understand what a "crime" is. This is a "socially dangerous act", as prescribed in Article 14 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Article 6 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation formulates the principle of justice: "Punishment and other measures of a criminal nature applied to a person who has committed a crime must be fair, that is, correspond to the nature and degree of public danger of the crime, the circumstances of its commission and the identity of the perpetrator."

In view of the above, I am sure that whatever the official decision of the court, internally you know that I am not guilty.

And at the very end it's for you, Your Honor:

The pages of the Bible are alive, it's like an action series.

Turn it on, reading it in a hurry, so that it hits the target in life.

66 books. A biblical thriller. The history of living people,

Persecution, hatred, malice, curses, prisons, camps.

And modern history is full of sad pages here,

And peace—loving people are labeled "extremist".

They blaspheme God without hesitation, and their Bible is "not the same",

To inflate the case here trying to come up with, blame places.

Here, Your Honor, I'm standing in front of you, but I'm an invalid.

You have seen this for yourself, and a lot of references will fix it.

Yes, we are all here before God, and there are countless arguments here.

"Thank you for all your attention," I say to you, Your Honor!

Summary of the case

Region:

Vladimir region

Locality:

Carpets

What is suspected:

"took part in religious meetings of the participants of the MRO SI in Kovrov, spoke at them", "collected information about the amount of work done ... to introduce the ideology of the religious teaching of Jehovah's Witnesses"

Criminal case number:

12107170001000017

Case initiated:

June 28, 2021

Current stage of the case:

proceedings in the court of first instance

Investigates:

WITH the FSB of Russia in the Vladimir region

Articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation:

282.2 (2)

Case number in court:

1-21/2023 (1-425/2022)

Court of First Instance:

Kovrov City Court of the Vladimir region

Judge of the Court of First Instance:

Vyacheslav Kuznetsov