Russia's Jehovah's Witnesses caught up in "extremist" law

An undated handout photograph of Russian Jehovah's Witness Timofey Zhukov. Handout via REUTERS

LONDON (Reuters) - In the early morning of Feb. 15, 2019, armed police and intelligence agents burst into Timofey Zhukov's home in Surgut, an oil town in western Siberia. They knocked him to the floor, then began searching his belongings, he said.

It was one of at least 20 raids across Surgut that day, Zhukov told Reuters. He said all of those targeted were Jehovah's Witnesses, an organisation that had been banned in Russia two years earlier after Russia's Supreme Court ruled it extremist. Russian authorities argued the organisation promotes its beliefs as superior to other faiths.