Danish man arrested in Russian raid on Jehovah's Witness service

Doug Stanglin | USATODAY

A Danish national was arrested this week during a police raid in the central city of Oryol, Russia, during a worship service by members of the Jehovah's Witnesses, which Russia recently banned as an extremist organization.

The Dane was identified as Dennis Christensen, according to a spokesman for the religious organization in New York.

Christensen was picked up in the raid Thursday night by Oryol police and agents of the FSB, the successor to the KGB.

The officers also confiscated a Bible, religious literature, laptops and hard drives, according to the SOVA Center for Information and Analysis, a Russian non-profit group that tracks human rights issues in the country.

Russia's Supreme Court last month formally banned Jehovah's Witnesses as an extremist organization and ordered the state to seize its property in Russia.

The Interfax news agency quoted Justice Ministry attorney Svetlana Borisova in court as saying the religious group “poses a threat to the rights of the citizens, public order and public security.”

Borisova also said the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ opposition to blood transfusions violates Russian health care laws.

Documents posted by the Oryol region district court said Christensen was accused of committing a "serious crime" under the laws pertaining to an extremist organization and ordered held until trial.

Yaroslav Sivulsky, a lawyer for the local group, told the Russian website Mediazone that Christensen was arrested only because he was reading the Bible along with other worshippers, Radio Liberty reported.

David A. Semonian, a spokesman at the Jehovah's Witnesses’ world headquarters, said followers worldwide "are now even more concerned about our fellow worshippers in Russia."

"These disturbing events are clearly aftereffects of the Russian Supreme Court’s unjust decision against us," he said.

The Jehovah's Witnesses, which has some 175,000 followers in that country, first legally registered as a religious group in Russia in 1991 and re-registered in 1999, according to the organization's international website.

In February, investigators inspected the headquarters of the Jehovah's Witnesses in St. Petersburg, the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported. More than 70,000 pages of documents were confiscated for the General Prosecutor's Office, according to Russia's Sova Center of Information and Analysis, which monitors hate crimes and the enforcement of anti-extremist laws.

Earlier this month, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she raised her concerns over the Jehovah's Witnesses ban and other human rights issues in a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.