By Alexander Marrow
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia has unexpectedly released a Jehovah's Witness on probation after a court overturned his 6-1/2 year jail sentence for extremism on appeal, a decision hailed by his lawyer on Tuesday as a "miracle".
The religious group said it welcomed Monday's decision to free Gennady Shpakovskiy, 61, less than two months after he was sentenced in the northwestern city of Pskov, but said it did not mean Russia was showing greater leniency to its adherents.
Shpakovskiy's sentence on June 9 was the harshest handed to a Jehovah's Witness in Russia since a 2017 Supreme Court decision branded the Christian denomination an extremist group.
Jehovah's Witnesses have been under pressure for years in Russia, where the dominant Orthodox Church is championed by President Vladimir Putin. Orthodox scholars have cast them as a dangerous foreign sect that erodes state institutions and traditional values, allegations they reject.
Shpakovskiy, a Russian, denied charges of organising and financing extremist activities. The Pskov regional court upheld his conviction but overturned the sentence after his appeal.
"I thought everything would remain in force, but a pleasant miracle has happened, something unexpected both for me and the defendant," said his lawyer, Arly Chimirov.
Jarrod Lopes, a U.S.-based spokesman for the religious group, said Shpakovskiy remained stigmatised as a convicted extremist and urged Russia to stop criminalising what he said was the peaceful Christian worship of Jehovah's Witnesses.
Describing it as "just one ruling," he said: "We do not yet see it as having national significance. We will see if subsequent cases reveal a pattern of hope."
Putin said in 2018 he did not understand why authorities were pursuing the group, but the Kremlin has said since that the group remains illegal under current legislation.