A Jehovah’s Witness from Kazan, a major city on the Volga River, has been released after five years in prison.

Jehovah’s Witness Konstantin Sannikov has been released from penal colony No. 8 in Almetyevsk, a town in Tatarstan. This was reported by a portal covering the persecution of believers of this faith.

Sannikov was detained at the end of August 2020. According to investigators, the believer held “illegal religious meetings… aimed at encouraging [the audience] to a hostile perception of people distinguished by their religious affiliation.” In 2023, a court in Kazan found him guilty of organising the activities of an extremist organisation (part 1, article 282.2 of the Criminal Code) and financing such an organisation (part 1, article 282.3 of the Criminal Code). He was sentenced to six and a half years in a general regime colony, with an additional year of restricted freedom.

With the benefit of reduced sentence calculations for time spent in pre-trial detention, he served his full sentence in five years.