The last word of the defendant Valery Maletsky in Novosibirsk

 RUSSIA

The last word of the defendant Valery Maletsky in Novosibirsk

December 15, 2023

Novosibirsk region

The believer discusses the baseless trial of Jesus Christ, the executions of Jehovah's Witnesses in Nazi Germany, exile in the Soviet Union and persecution in modern Russia. He concludes: "But, as you can see, history does not teach anyone anything."

Transcript of the court session in the Novosibirsk District Court of the Novosibirsk Region dated December 15, 2023 in the case 1-16/2023 (1-181/2022) on the accusation of Valery Vladimirovich Maletskov of committing a crime under Part 1 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.

Maletskov Valery Vladimirovich:

Your Honor, first of all, I would like to express my gratitude to you for giving us the opportunity to comment on the course of consideration of the case materials. You not only tried to get to the bottom of the matter, but also treated our circumstances with understanding, allowing us to relax during your holidays. It is clear that you have a lot of experience in court proceedings, which allows you to distinguish a real criminal from an innocent person, and you adhered to the rules of the court hearing stipulated at the very beginning. Thank you for all this!

I also want to thank the state prosecutor for taking his duties seriously, for your good, clear reading and pronunciation when reading the case materials. You have a difficult job in the fight for compliance with the law. Thanks to the secretary and the assistant judge for their respectful attitude and hard work.

Many thanks to my dear, beloved wife Marina. You have supported me all this time with care, deeds, words and presence at court sessions. I thank my dear mother, who, despite her health problems, was also there and was very worried about me; my son Rostislav, although he was not present at the court hearings, because he was still a minor, but he was also very worried about me.

Many thanks to my many friends. Your prayers and support, which manifested itself in the form of loving, caring assurances, reminded me that you were there for me in my trials, and we saw and felt for ourselves how Jehovah answers your prayers for us.

I really want to thank my lawyer Marina Alexandrovna for her kind attitude and understanding, competent legal defense and qualified assistance. You have indeed proved to be excellent experts in your field.

Since I am a believer, I am especially grateful to my God Jehovah for his love and the power he gives. I am sure that he is present here in this courtroom, because in his word of the Bible, he himself assures us in 2 Chronicles 16:9: "For the eyes of the Lord look out over the whole earth to support those whose hearts are completely devoted to Him." In addition, he is called the "judge of the whole earth." How can he skip a trial where those who are loyal to him are judged? Without him, I would not have been able to adequately defend the truth in this trial.

Open the search bar on your phone and ask Google, "Okay, Google, what's the name of God?" Here is his answer: "Jehovah (?????) is also an acronym for the phrase of three words haya-howe-yihye (???, haya — "(He) lived", ?????, hove — "(He) is alive", ??????, ve-ihye — "(He) will live"). It is translated briefly as "the Eternal One or "the One Who abides" (this is how God is presented to Moses in the Old Testament, Exodus 3:7-8, 13-14). Yahweh (Jehovah) — appears for the first time in Gen. 2:4 (replaced by the word Lord in some translations). YHWH, the name of God, occurs in the Bible (6,823 times), the so—called "tetragrammaton", that is, a four-letter image of the name of the Lord; this name is the distinctive personal name of the God of Israel." As you can see, even Google knows the name of God, pronounces it correctly, does not doubt its authenticity and does not consider it a sign of extremist activity.

This name was not invented by Jehovah's Witnesses. The founder of Christianity, Jesus Christ, said in John 17:6: "I have revealed your name to the people whom You have given me out of the world." Being born and raised in the Jewish culture of the first century AD, Jesus Christ knew, used and taught others this name, and no one at that time had any questions about the name of God. That was the name he had in mind when he taught others to pray. The exemplary prayer, known as Our Father, begins with this phrase: "Pray like this: Our Father, who art in heaven! Hallowed be Thy name." Millions of people repeat this prayer, often without thinking about its meaning and significance.

The use of God's name in speech cannot be a sign of extremist activity, it is a historical heritage, a cultural asset that everyone needs to know about and cherish. And all attempts to hide it and make others forget it can be called a crime against cultural heritage, traditional values and the history of mankind, including for Russian society.

In the comments to the materials of the criminal case, I have already mentioned that the Orthodox Church is building a temple "In the name of Archimandrite of Altai" in the Dzerzhinsky Garden Park in Novosibirsk. He was Archimandrite Mikhail Glukharev (Makariy), an Orthodox missionary, an expert in the Hebrew language. In his translation of the Hebrew Scriptures of the Bible into Russian, which he did in 1840, he used the name Jehovah about 3,500 times. His translation was published in the Orthodox Review magazine, however, only after his death in 1860. During his lifetime, he was denied the press, and even punished for making such a request to the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church. This is one of their many examples of the fact that the name Jehovah is a national treasure, reflected in one of the translations of the Bible in Russian. And cultural heritage should be proud of, it cannot be a sign of a crime!

"Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil, darkness is revered as light, and light as darkness." That's what the Bible says, in Isaiah 5:20. These words contain a serious warning for those who deliberately distort the right, calling it evil. At one time, some Jews spoke negatively about Jesus Christ, they said: "Are we not telling the truth that You are a Samaritan and that You have a devil in You?" These people deliberately distorted the truth, tried to hurt and humiliate, and create a negative image of Christ in other people. This was mainly done by the religious leaders of that time, who were offended that Jesus was telling the truth and denouncing their evil deeds, thoughts and attitude of the heart. For this, he was branded with various unflattering comparisons, calling him a madman, a friend of drunks and scammers, a glutton that he was breaking the law. They tried with all their might to stop his activities, constantly looking for an opportunity to accuse him, to take him at his word. To their accusations, Jesus answered simply: "There is no demon in me, but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me."

More than 30 years ago, when I started studying the Bible, there were many negative reviews about Jehovah's Witnesses. They were called sectarians, a totalitarian sect, accused of taking apartments, luring them into a sect and taking everything away, destroying marriages, sacrificing children and the like. Rumors and gossip and not a single real fact of something bad. Those offensive labels that were pasted on Jehovah's Witnesses thirty years ago as "sectarians" did not particularly affect them and what they did. Jehovah's Witnesses continued to believe in Jehovah and tell people about him, study the Bible, and meet with fellow believers to discuss biblical thoughts together. But over time, they began to be labeled more radical, accusing them of extremism now. In our case, this accusation of extremist activity is just an empty sound, which has no real basis either in words or deeds.

Even earlier, during the Soviet regime, Jehovah's Witnesses were ridiculed as inadequate, narrow-minded, dark religious fanatics, they were accused of anti-Soviet activities, called agents of Western influence, sentenced to long prison terms, deported and exiled to the Gulag for their beliefs. In Hitler's Germany, Jehovah's Witnesses were mercilessly persecuted, accused of having links with Communists (although these Communists in another country accused Witnesses to the contrary), some were executed by guillotine or shot, thousands passed through concentration camps on charges of "undermining national unity", for refusing to say "Heil Hitler" and serve in the Nazi army. Who and in what different ways denigrated Jehovah's Witnesses at different times and on different occasions!

It is interesting to note that after Jesus Christ celebrated his last Jewish Passover with his apostles, at which he introduced the name "Supper of Remembrance", he was arrested at night and taken to religious leaders. After hours of biased night interrogation with bullying and with fake prosecution witnesses who contradicted each other in their testimony, this night court, consisting of judges, teachers of the Law, priests, Pharisees, unanimously accused him of blasphemy. Note, not for the evidence of his evil deeds, but for the fact that he called himself the Son of God. They regarded this as blasphemy. According to the law of that time, among Jews, a person accused of such a crime should be executed. But the Jews did not have the right to carry out the death penalty at that time, since they were under Roman rule, and the right to the death penalty had to be obtained from a representative of Roman justice. But for the Roman court, such an accusatory formulation of "blasphemy" was not at all the basis for carrying out the death sentence. Then these people changed the wording of the accusation for Roman justice, which was carried out by Pontius Pilate at that time. These people informed Pilate, "If He had not been a villain, we would not have betrayed Him to you" (John 18:30). "We found that He corrupts our people and forbids giving tribute to Caesar, calling Himself Christ the King," says Matthew 23:2. Please note that Jesus was labeled a "villain" — a dangerous criminal, "corrupts the people" — conducts extremist activities, poses a public danger, "prohibits paying taxes" — that is, commits financial crimes, and even "thinks of himself as a king" — conducts political illegal activities, undermines the foundations of the constitutional system, wants to establish his own the board.

How has the rhetoric of the prosecution changed: from accusations of blasphemy to loud and terrible accusations in a whole range of crimes. Although Pilate, as a judge, did not find these accusations really justified, he was forced to obey the demands of the accusers of Jesus Christ, because then he himself would have been accused of treason, and he ordered him to be executed as a dangerous criminal, demonstratively crucified between two real robbers condemned to death.

Jesus Christ was wrongfully sentenced to death on false charges by the official representatives of the law of that time, who were protecting the constitutional order and the security of the state, protecting the rights and freedoms of their citizens. At least that's how it was presented on their part. 300 years later, Christianity became the official religion of Rome. And in the following centuries, the main religion of the world. The chronology of our era begins to be counted from the estimated date of birth of Jesus Christ (from the birth of Christ), a dangerous criminal, a "villain".

Most of the works of art and architecture of that time are associated with faith in Christ as the Son of God. A dangerous criminal sentenced to death becomes a central figure of global importance. Don't you think it's strange, the whole world has become under the banner of a dangerous criminal? It turns out that the whole world recognized that he was repressed without real guilt, and he was rehabilitated, recognizing as illegal and criminal what was allegedly done to him according to the law of that time. What conclusion do we have? Who is the real culprit? Jesus is not a criminal, but the criminals are those 70 members of the Sanhedrin, the highest Jewish court, who condemned Jesus to death, and Pontius Pilate, who approved this sentence. They committed a monstrous crime, a crime against human rights and freedoms, under the guise of the law, carried out lawlessness! This is one of the egregious examples when white is called black and evil is called good. But over time, the truth will become true again, and the lie will be revealed as a lie, and there is no way to change that. By the way, Pontius Pilate was removed from office some time later, he was accused of serious violations and had to appear before the Roman Caesar. His name has disappeared from history. The high priest Caiaphas, the presiding judge who judged Jesus, was soon removed from power.

Leo Tolstoy has such a remarkable scene in the novel "Resurrection", written in the period from 1889 to 1899. To quote: "People in the village were going to read the Gospel, the authorities came and dispersed them. The next Sunday they gathered again, then they called the sergeant, drew up an act, and they were put on trial. The judicial investigator interrogated, the comrade prosecutor drew up an indictment, the judicial chamber approved the charge, and they were put on trial…

— Are there really laws according to which a person can be exiled for reading the Gospel together with others?

— Not only to be exiled to places not so remote, but to penal servitude, if only it is proved that, while reading the Gospel, they allowed themselves to interpret it to others not as they were told, and therefore condemned the church interpretation. Blasphemy against the Orthodox faith among the people and under article one hundred and ninety–sixth - a reference to the settlement."

Don't you think it sounds very modern? But here is the real story of the Jehovah's Witness of those times, which Tolstoy wrote about. This man began to share knowledge from the Bible with people upon his return to tsarist Russia. Simeon Kozlitsky became a Bible Researcher (as Jehovah's Witnesses were called at that time), told people about his new faith, until in 1891 he was sent to Siberia on charges of insulting the Metropolitan of Moscow. But in 1913, the Society of Bible Researchers, as Jehovah's Witnesses were then called, was officially registered in the Russian Empire. It seems that this registration served as recognition and rehabilitation of the activities of this religion, but not for long. After 4 years, everything has changed.

The long period of Soviet rule became a real test of faith for Jehovah's Witnesses. All the power of Soviet propaganda was aimed at discrediting Jehovah's Witnesses in the eyes of people. They were publicly tried, sentenced to death, later commuted to long prison terms, deported with their families to Siberia for eternal settlement, and their property was confiscated in favor of the state. Operation North, conducted by the MGB of the USSR in 1951 under the personal leadership of Viktor Abakumov, was carried out without investigation and a court decision. A total of 8,576 people (3,048 families) were evicted from their places of residence and sent in freight wagons to eternal settlement in Siberia, simply on the basis of religious affiliation to Jehovah's Witnesses. So the authorities wanted to completely get rid of Jehovah's Witnesses in the USSR. By the way, Viktor Abakumov himself, the organizer and mastermind of this operation, was arrested six months later and shot a year later. And what was the essence of the crimes of Jehovah's Witnesses? Anti—Soviet activity is the official formulation.

Jehovah's Witnesses were accused of secretly continuing their activities: they gathered for meetings in small groups, preached, attracting new members, and even clandestinely printed their religious literature. Crimes were called the usual ways for the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses to express their faith. But no real crimes were recorded in any case. During the late USSR under Andropov, accusations of anti-Soviet activities became outdated and were no longer perceived by society as something dangerous. Therefore, in order to create a new form of visibility for the allegedly dangerous criminal activities of Jehovah's Witnesses, they were accused of religious extremism and, as usual, without any grounds. Shortly after Andropov's death, perestroika began, which led to the fact that Jehovah's Witnesses and their family members who suffered from the persecution of the Soviet regime were acquitted, rehabilitated, and the state still pays compensation to victims of those political repressions. But, as you can see, history does not teach anyone anything.

Living in modern Russia, we are again faced with the same rhetoric of accusations against us. We are once again branded with the shameful labels of "extremists", "sectarians", "adherents" and again they open criminal cases and put us in prisons.  All the same things that Nikolai Semenovich Gordienko wrote about in his book "Russian Jehovah's Witnesses: History and Modernity": "Since Jehovah's Witnesses did not commit real crimes, such crimes were attributed to them, putting forward unsubstantiated accusations, not confirmed by facts, but precisely tailored to the "necessary" article of the Criminal Code. Most often, it was formed as follows (given according to the real indictment document): "The actions of the defendants, expressed in the organization and leadership of a group whose activities, carried out under the guise of preaching religious beliefs and performing religious rituals, are associated with harm to the health of citizens, encroachment on the personality and rights of citizens, with encouraging citizens to abandon public life activities and performance of civil duties are criminal and provided for by ... article". And from the document itself it is clear that the defendants did not threaten anyone's health, did not encroach on anyone's personality and did not infringe on anyone's rights. They only kept, copied or reread and distributed their biblical publications, which the court declared anti-Soviet without quoting the relevant quotations, since there were none in these publications."

Nothing has changed for Jehovah's Witnesses over the past 100 years in their creed, in their attitude towards other people, in their religious habits and lifestyle. They remain law-abiding, no matter what country they live in, no matter what regime they exist under.  They always respect the Bible, appreciate the opportunity to communicate with their co-religionists, are happy to share their knowledge with other people without obliging them to anything, honest taxpayers, law-abiding citizens. It would seem that since the time of Andropov, when Jehovah's Witnesses were accused of religious extremism, the state has already apologized for this, admitted its wrongness, recognizing Jehovah's Witnesses as victims of unjustified repression, but now again we are called extremists according to the same formulations. And what has changed?

"Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil." This biblical verse from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah is clearly visible in the example of the famous Nuremberg trial of Nazi criminals, but few people know that after this trial there were more trials of the Nazis. One of these trials was over Hitler's judges. At this trial, when the presiding judge read out the guilty verdict, one of the defendants could not stand it and screamed: "But I didn't know it would come to this!" The presiding judge replied to him: "It had already come to this when you first convicted an innocent man."

The biblical book Ecclesiastes 8:9 says: "I have seen all these things, and I have turned my heart to every work that is done under the sun. There is a time when a person dominates a person to his detriment." This biblical wisdom states the sad fact that in the history of mankind, the power of man over man leads to injustice, division, suffering and brings troubles, grief and disappointment. The time in which we live is no exception, but on the contrary, is described in the Bible as "in the last days there will be hard times" (2 Timothy 3:1). And despite all sorts of attempts by people in an effort to change something for the better, all efforts remain unsuccessful and fail. No wonder there is such a saying: we wanted the best, but it turned out as always.

Our Creator never planned or intended for people to control people. Any form of human government can be compared to a compass corrupted by a magnet, which, whatever one may say, seems to indicate the direction, but almost always the wrong one and, accordingly, will lead to the wrong place. Even if he points in the right direction at times, under the influence of the magnet, he will inevitably go astray. This is evident in relation to us and what we do. In the history of Russian Jehovah's Witnesses, they are sometimes accused of crimes and sent into exile, then they will be reinstated, then they will be accused of serious crimes again, then they will be rehabilitated again as unreasonably repressed. But Jehovah's Witnesses, as they were peaceful and law-abiding people, remain so, we just want to follow the biblical principle: "So that we can lead a calm and quiet life, showing devotion to God and seriousness in everything" (1 Timothy 2:2). Our position as sincere believers is simple — we want to be devoted to our God Jehovah in everything. There is absolutely no malicious intent in this, the destruction of the constitutional order, and even more so a crime. This is a constitutional right, and a right cannot be a crime.

The program of Bible study with Jehovah's Witnesses is the same in all countries and the most remote corners of the earth. It is based on the Bible, or Holy Scripture. In any country, this book is an absolute authority for all believers, regardless of religion, even among Muslims. It is no coincidence that it is called the Book of Books. In the vast majority of countries, the activities of the Jehovah's Witness denomination are carried out without any obstacles. The exception is countries with totalitarian regimes in which the rights and freedoms of citizens are not a constitutional value. So, the Bible study program benefits people from a wide variety of professions and those who find themselves in various life situations. For example, for more than 15 years, Jehovah's Witnesses have been studying the Bible with inmates of three prisons in Guatemala. Prison guards have noticed that such training has benefited those who attend these lessons. Jehovah's Witnesses in Central America have also offered to hold seminars for police officers and firefighters. Representatives of these special services expressed their agreement, and Jehovah's Witnesses began to give lectures for them twice a week. During the training, topics such as getting along with others, how to use the power properly, and how to work in a team were considered. The seminar was attended by 450 police officers and firefighters. As you can imagine, the "extremists", if we follow the rhetoric of the investigative authorities in our case, train police officers how to properly use their authority. Or is something wrong here?

When Jesus stood in front of Pilate during the interrogation, Pilate was displeased that Jesus did not answer him, and said threateningly: "Are you not answering me? Don't you know that I have the power to crucify You and the power to let You go?" In John 19:11, Jesus answered him: "You would have no power over Me if it had not been given to you from above."

According to Pilate, power can be disposed of in different ways. You can condemn, but you can justify. But the question is, on the basis of which it is possible to condemn by right, or it is possible to condemn without right, to please the prosecutor. There is always a choice.

Your Honor, there is no guilt or crime in my case. And in fact, this has already been proved by the European Court of 07.06.2022, it is determined by this court. We have been acquitted of all charges that have been brought against us for many years. It remains a matter of time before this will be applicable in our territory. My conscience is clear before people and before God. I haven't done anything wrong to anyone. Therefore, Your Honor, I ask you to acquit me for lack of evidence of a crime.

Summary of the case

Region:

Novosibirsk region

Locality:

Novosibirsk

What is suspected of:

according to the investigation, "he organized meetings and led the reading and discussion of literature recognized as extremist" (with reference to the decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation on the liquidation of all 396 registered organizations of Jehovah's Witnesses)

Criminal case number:

11907500001000015

Initiated:

April 19, 2019

The current stage of the case:

The appeal

Is being investigated by:

The Federal Security Service of Russia for the Novosibirsk Region

Articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation:

282.2 (2), 282.3 (1), 282.2 (1)

The number of the case in court:

1-16/2023 (1-181/2022)

Court of First Instance:

Novosibirsk District Court of the Novosibirsk region

Judge of the Court of first instance:

Oleg Karpets