The last word of the defendant Boris Andreev in Yaroslavsky

 RUSSIA 

The last word of the defendant Boris Andreev in Yaroslavsky

July 9, 2024

Primorsky Krai

Speaking in court with the last word, the believer told how from a young age he sought to read and understand the Bible and how it subsequently changed his life. He noted: "If I tell a person that God offers to leave the things that destroy him and become happier, there is nothing extremist in this."

Transcript of the court session in the Khorolsky District Court of Primorsky Krai dated 07/09/2024 in the case 1-8/2024 (1-183/2023) on the charges of Andreev Boris Ivanovich and others. of committing a crime under Part 1 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.

Andreev Boris Ivanovich:

Dear participants of the process! Thank you so much for your patience and for trying to get to the bottom of the case under consideration. I thank everyone who took part in it at various stages.

I am grateful to investigator Piskun Elena Valeryevna for twice refusing to initiate criminal proceedings due to the lack of corpus delicti. That is, perhaps she understood that in fact there is nothing to bring us to criminal responsibility for.

I am grateful to the representatives of the prosecution, who, although they changed during the process, tried to delve into the case and even learned how to correctly emphasize the name of the Great God "Jehovah" in accordance with the norms of the Russian language.

Thank you very much, Your Honor, that as the presiding judge of the court you gave the opportunity to express your position to the representatives of the defense, thereby ensuring the adversarial nature of the parties.

I thank all the lawyers present, who, defending their clients, actually defended all three defendants: Daria Anatolyevna Argunova, Vitaly Yuryevich Beregovsky, along with his assistant Dasha. Of course, I am grateful to my lawyer Igor Valeryevich Shumal, who has always supported my position and expressed words in my defense.

Anna Gennadyevna, you are a great professional, you have always worked the hardest at meetings, you managed to fix everything. And your kindness to the audience, our friends, was very pleasant to me personally. Good luck to you in your future work.

My dear friends! You actually showed your friendship, sincere care, made sacrifices, sometimes you did not get into the hall, but at the same time you were glad to be able to support us by simply shouting that you love us, following a passing car order. You have been very supportive.

I especially want to say about my defender, my beloved wife Alexandra Vladimirovna. It was not easy for her in the absence of her husband — to keep the apartment in order, to support me in every possible way, to delve into, to put it mildly, difficult legal issues, to take care of her and my health (to come to the pre—trial detention center — both in Ussuriysk and Vladivostok - to meet with the management and doctors, to seek an examination). At the same time, she always looked great, smiled, and it gave me strength. Although I can't even imagine how tired you are. Thank you so much, Sashulechka!

The trial of people who sincerely believe in God Jehovah, the Creator of heaven and earth, our Life—Giver, the one who knows man best, because he created him, is coming to an end. He knows and lovingly tells us through the Bible what we need to be happy.: do not kill other people, do not steal, do not smoke or use drugs for non-medical purposes, do not abuse alcohol, do not cheat on spouses, do not be greedy. I won't list everything. I will say that I have not always been a Jehovah's Witness and have not always adhered to all these norms.

When I was growing up, the state's policy was atheistic, and that's how I was raised. My parents were Communists. In the first grade, I became an October boy, then, as I grew up, a pioneer, a Komsomol member, a member of the CPSU. How did it happen that an almost militant atheist suddenly began to worship God?

I loved reading very much. By about the fifth grade, I reread all the books that were in the village library on astronomy and physics, including quantum. And then one day I went to a friend, I was no more than 12 years old, I saw some unusual book in the summer kitchen. It was the Bible. While my friend was getting ready, I sat down to read it. I was barely torn away from her. My friend has already gone to play lapta, but I'm still reading. Finally, his grandmother got angry and almost forcibly took away the Bible. I understand it: in the early 1960s of the last century, believers were not called extremists, but atheism was clearly planted. As I understand it now, I didn't have time to read more than five chapters of Genesis, but I really wanted to read more.

I will not say that I set a goal in my life to read this book at that time. But from time to time I tried to do it. Even when I was a schoolboy, I found Leo Taxil's book "The Funny Bible" in the library. Of course, the Bible was ridiculed there, and the "benefit" of this book was to those people who fought against it. Still, I got some vague idea of what she was talking about at all.

In Moscow, while getting my second higher education, I tried to read a real Bible in the main library of the country. I was refused, but I was persistent. I remember being sent from the book room to the microfilm room. For a long time they "kicked" back and forth, in the end they advised me to read atheistic literature.

One day another friend told me that his relative had a Bible, and in the evening he gave it to me to read so that I would return it in the morning. Of course, it was more than the first time, but you can't read an ordinary book of this volume overnight. And again I was not satisfied.

In the 1980s, I went to sea on a fishing trawler, was the first mate of the captain. Once in the port of New Zealand, after being dismissed, I returned on board the ship and found out that someone had come, brought books, magazines, according to the description of one of the books there was a Bible in Russian. I could only regret that I had not met this book, because the next day we went to sea.

Finally, in the late 1980s, some relaxation in relation to religion began, and around 1990, my relatives, knowing that I had an interest in the Bible, sent it from Leningrad at that time. And I started reading it. I didn't read that much, I understood even less. I put it off, read it, put it off again. I understood very little, nothing came together, but it was clear that the book was unusual and it was necessary to understand it. But in the 1990s, so many contradictory things appeared that it was impossible to separate the truth from everything else.

Once with a business partner (I lived in Vladivostok at that time) Together we convinced his wife that it was not worth letting in two, as she said, nice people who talked about the Bible and left two magazines to read. I then decided that it was scammers walking around. As I understand it now, these were Jehovah's Witnesses, and again I missed the chance to better understand the Bible.

And so, in the late 1990s, while living in Khorol, I heard from a neighbor that Jehovah's Witnesses were walking down the street, that they hypnotize people, take away apartments, and start talking about God. And at the same time, I read a detective story that describes such things: hypnosis, deprivation of housing, livelihood, and even murder. And all this is done by representatives of some sect. I wanted to talk about the Bible, but I imagined the rest… I didn't need that. And so I'm working in the yard of my house, two women come up, ask a question, and I realize that it's them. I didn't know how to resist "hypnosis", so I shouted at the top of my voice: "Leave immediately, I won't talk about anything." The women were not offended — as they walked, they walked on with an unperturbed look. I stayed standing and it became strange to me that they gave up so quickly and did not hypnotize me, scammers do not do that. And then I felt very ashamed, I was ready to sink through the ground. I just imagined what it looked like from the outside. I wanted to call out, apologize, well, they've already gone far. I decided to talk to them next time.

I was wondering why I behaved like that. And the fact is that society is intensively imposing an attitude towards Jehovah's Witnesses as some kind of very dangerous sect. In the media, they were often written about in a negative, cynically dismissive tone, the facts were distorted, and sometimes outright lies sounded. And this reaction of mine was just a reflection of what was being imposed on people.

The next time I met with Jehovah's Witnesses was in the early 2000s. By the way, I knew the name of God Jehovah long before that. I don't remember how, but I knew. I loved to read, and this name is found in Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy, Pushkin, Derzhavin, Turgenev, Hemingway, Dostoevsky and many other writers. By the way, even now, while in custody, reading books in jail, I met the name of Jehovah in the novels of Tolstoy, Dumas, in the works "The Sea Wolf" by Jack London and "Love Your Neighbor" by Remarque. During all this time, I have come across the name Jehovah in so many books that I did not have much prejudice against this name.

After several meetings with Jehovah's Witnesses, I realized that everything they say is consistent with the Bible, and they themselves are peaceful, honest people who have nothing to do with fraud, murder or witchcraft. It is simply impossible to relate either to their thinking or to their lifestyle. By that time, I had finished reading the Bible on my own for the second time, and still my Christian teachings did not add up to a single whole. And the "puzzles" began to take shape one by one, a whole picture began to emerge. Before that, I had asked questions to various people, but I had not received any clear answers. And then I realized that I had found the truth. Is there even a little bit of extremism in the fact that I finally got to know the Bible better?

At the same time, it turned out that knowing who Jehovah was and how to worship him correctly was not enough. We must please God with our way of life. And there was something to fix. I often abused alcohol, as well as smoking, low moral and moral standards, foul language, and in the 1990s my family collapsed. That's where I really saw Jehovah's help. After all, what was happening: morally, I was sliding down, but I didn't have enough strength to stop the fall and change. It eventually came to the point that the deputy head of the district administration, who oversaw my area of work, said: "Either code or quit." I didn't want to go into coding, because I already knew how Jehovah treats magic, witchcraft, spells, hypnosis. Therefore, I had to resign from the administration. But soon, with God's help, I overcame all these problems without resorting to the help of so-called healers. It was the holy spirit of Jehovah who helped me — the help was so strong.

I no longer worked in the administration, but they took me to the unified dispatch service, seeing the amazing changes for the better that had happened to me. And I am very grateful to my God Jehovah, who helped me with the power of his holy spirit to make such changes. I was convinced of the truth of the words from the Bible: "I can do everything thanks to someone who strengthens me." Later, I was awarded the title of "veteran of labor", and of federal significance. I think even if you dig around for a long time, you can't find anything extremist here.

When I got rid of everything that burdened me (I listed drunkenness, smoking, and so on), I could already serve Jehovah, because I fell in love with him, I wanted to please him and do at least something insignificant that I can, in response to his love, kindness and care that he showed to me. It was only thanks to him that I was able to change my life, to feel like a respectable person again. And God has never demanded or expected too much from me. But how should I live now? Just as the prophet Micah wrote down. These are the words from the Bible: "Oh, man! You have been told what is good and what the Lord requires of you: to act justly, to love works of mercy, and to walk humbly before your God" (Micah 6:8). I could walk modestly with my God with a clear conscience. I served Jehovah, I was never a member of the MRO, there was never an MRO of Jehovah's Witnesses in the Khorol district, there was no one who was a member of any MRO. There have never been those who were in the Management Center of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia, including me, who was not the founder of this Center. I served God because I wanted to please him. We had a religious group without registration. Legally, we were not part of any structures, and even more so, we were not engaged in extremist activities.

The year 2017 came, about 400 legal entities of Jehovah's Witnesses were liquidated, which had nothing to do with the fact that I had been searching for the truth all my life, found it and now served God, faith in whom is not prohibited. And I was artificially labeled as nothing less than the organizer of the Management Center of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia. Why should I create any other organizations if I lived and worshipped God without them until 2017 and now I continue to live without them, love Jehovah and do everything possible to please him?! And the results of the examination confirm that I am a mentally healthy person.

Your Honor, I have devoted about 20 years of my life to Komsomol and party work, thinking that my work brings us closer to the bright future of all mankind — communism. Nothing like that happened. And it was only from the Bible that I found out why. "I know, Lord, that his way is not in the will of man, that it is not in the power of him who goes to give direction to his footsteps" (Jeremiah 10:23). After learning the biblical truth, I realized that a person without Jehovah is not able to find the right path on his own, but he can go through life with God. Yes, any person who wants to change his personality in the way that God wills can. And I cannot, having found this path to happiness, hide it from others. Therefore, I share knowledge about God, his wonderful qualities and wonderful plan with others, using the right enshrined in the Constitution of the country in which I live. I used to think that it was necessary to change the world, now I know that people need to change, and you, Your Honor, like no one else, know this, meeting with murderers, drug addicts, thieves, rapists, scammers, destroyers of nature at trials. By the way, there are many examples that, having become acquainted with the biblical truth, people abandoned such cases and thanked God for it for the rest of their lives.

There is a short parable related to this topic. One day, the father was busy with something very important, and the little 4-year-old son bothered him with his problems, questions, children at this age have a lot of questions, they learn the world, learn. His father, in order to occupy him with something, took a political map of the world, cut it up, chopped it into pieces with scissors, mixed everything up and gave his son the task to fold it, thinking that it would take him at least an hour. But after 10 minutes, my son had everything ready. "How did you manage so quickly?" my father asked. "And there was a man on the other side," the son replied. There was a portrait of a man. "I did not collect an incomprehensible picture, but just collected a person." It turned out that to assemble the world, you need to assemble a person.

Your Honor, it's not just criminals who can change. Agree, if a smoker, a drunkard, a fornicator, a foul-mouthed person leaves all these things, it's also for the benefit of a person and his loved ones. And if I tell a person that God offers to leave the things that destroy him and become happier, then there is nothing extremist in this either. If I tell someone that God condemns same-sex marriage, but gives advice through the Bible to help establish relationships between people created for marriage, a man and a woman, is there extremism in this?

And one more thing. Throughout my time in the pre-trial detention center, whenever my stay in custody was extended, the representative of the prosecution, speaking about why I should continue to be held there, cited one of the arguments that I would continue to engage in criminal activity on the outside. Does the prosecution seriously believe that by imprisoning me, you are depriving me of the opportunity to love God, obey him, talk to him, work on my qualities, read the Bible, communicate through letters with friends and answer questions about the Bible and other people's God? There are people in jail too. And if many people refer to employment outside, then there is no problem in prison. There are more people in jail who want to learn about God than outside. While in the cell, I can sing songs praising my God, pray, talk about useful things with the help of the Bible, sing a song again, discuss a useful and interesting topic, sing a song again and pray. And there is nothing extremist about it either. What can stop me from pleasing God? Someone will say, "Probably only the death penalty." But that's all a man can do — take his life.

This is exactly what they did to Jesus and people rarely remember about it, but absolutely all people know what happened next, even atheists — Christ is risen. Yes, my God Jehovah, the Almighty, loving life giver, is able to do this. Being sure of this, the Apostle Paul wrote: "I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor governments, nor the present, nor the future, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, and no other creation can deprive us of the love of God, which he shows to us through Christ Jesus, our Gentlemen" (Romans 8:38, 39). And I have no doubt about it at all. And if in prison, after hearing the joyful news, someone leaves their evil deeds, then we need to pay our salaries. But I will refuse. I love people and I love God. And everything I can do for him, I do selflessly.

In the process, the question was raised: is any document issued to a person baptized as a Jehovah's Witness? Yes, such a document exists and was issued by Jehovah himself. These are his words recorded in the Bible: "But my witnesses, saith the Lord, are you and my servant whom I have chosen" (Isaiah 43:10). In the same way, Jesus Christ himself is called "a faithful and true witness, the beginning of God's creation" in the book of Revelation. In the book of Acts of the Apostles, in the 5th chapter, verses 27 to 39, the disciples of Jesus are also called witnesses. This passage is also notable in that it describes the trial of Jesus' disciples.

I will read it from the Bible: "When they had brought them, they set them up in the Sanhedrin; and the high priest asked them, saying, Have we not firmly forbidden you to teach about this name? And behold, you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and want to bring that Man's blood on us. Peter and the apostles answered and said, "It is necessary to obey God more than men; the God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you killed by hanging on a tree.": God exalted Him with His right hand into a Ruler and Savior in order to give Israel repentance and forgiveness of sins; We are His witnesses in this, and the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey Him. Hearing this, they were torn with anger and plotted to kill them. But standing up in the Sanhedrin, a certain Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, respected by all the people, ordered the Apostles to be brought out for a short time, and said to them: Men of Israel! think to yourself about these people, what you should do with them: For not long before this, Febda appeared, posing as some great one, and about four hundred people joined him; but he was killed, and all who obeyed him scattered and disappeared; After him, during the census, he appeared Judas is a Galilean, and he took quite a lot of people with him.; but he perished, and all who obeyed him scattered; And now, I say to you, leave these people alone and leave them: for if this enterprise and this work are from men, then it will be destroyed, But if from God, then you cannot destroy it; take care that you do not to turn out to be God-defying."

Your Honor, I have not committed anything extremist and I consider an acquittal to be the only lawful and fair verdict. You have everything you need: power, authority, law. I really hope that you will make the right decision, restore justice and pass an acquittal.

Summary of the case

Region:

Primorsky Krai

Locality:

Yaroslavsky

Criminal case number:

12202050023000021

Case initiated:

October 3, 2022

Current stage of the case:

The verdict has not entered into force

Investigating:

SU IC of the Russian Federation in Primorsky Krai

Articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation:

282.2 (1), 282.2 (2)

Case number in court:

1-8/2024 (1-183/2023)

Court of First Instance:

Khorolsky District Court of Primorsky Krai

Judge of the Court of first instance:

Tatiana Pogorelaya