Source: Forum 18, November 14, 2019
Three Protestant pastors given long jail terms in absentia for leading New Life Pentecostal Church in Kazakhstan’s commercial capital Almaty lost their appeal at Almaty City Court on November 1. The three have said they will appeal to Kazakhstan’s Supreme Court in the capital Nur-Sultan.
The pastors were variously accused of founding the Church in 1991 with “criminal intent,” and “by means of the technology of psychological and psychotherapeutic influence with the aim of causing psychological harm to the health and stealing others’ property by means of deception and abuse of trust… with the use of information technologies and methods of turning the victims into a state of changed consciousness (trance).”
The case against the three pastors is “complete drivel,” Yevgeny Zhovtis of the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Humants and the Rule of Law commented. “I have read the verdict. It is nonsense.”
The three convicted pastors now live in the United States. Pastor Zaikin told Forum 18 “we still want to return to Kazakhstan.”
Pastor Kryukov says attendance at New Life Church’s various services on an average Sunday in Almaty is currently about 850.
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