Russia sentences a Jehovah’s Witness member to six years in prison for fanaticism in Russia, years after the religious gathering was prohibited in the nation.

Danish national Dennis Christensen was in court in the southern Russian city of Oryol for the sentencing, spokesman for the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia Yaroslav Sivulskiy told AFP.

“We deeply regret the conviction of Dennis Christensen — an innocent man who did not commit any real crime,” Sivulskiy said in a statement.

It is sad that reading the Bible, preaching, and living a moral way of life is again a criminal offence in Russia.”

The Jehovah’s Witnesses, a US-based Christian evangelical movement, will appeal the verdict within 10 days, as indicated by an announcement from the association’s head office.

An AFP picture taker outside the court saw Christensen, 46, being driven past a mass of supporters by cops following the verdict.

Rights groups have condemned the trial, with Amnesty International saying it was “emblematic of the grave human rights violations” taking place in Russia.

Christensen told the court that officers of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) tried to persuade him to plead guilty to the charges by promising him a milder sentence.

He testified that when he refused to plead guilty, one FSB officer threatened that he would face the maximum 10-year prison sentence.

Christensen was captured in Oryol in May 2017, a month after Russia’s Supreme Court decided that the religious gathering ought to be shut down and never again permitted to work in the nation.

He was the first Jehovah’s Witness to be detained in Russia following the boycott. From that point forward, many different individuals from the gathering have been kept and deal with comparable indictments of radicalism.

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