The Russian historian was sentenced today, Monday (27/12) to 15 years in prison Yuri Dmitriev -specialist for the persecutions during the period of Stalinism- for child sexual abuse, a case that has political motives according to his associates.
The announcement of the verdict on Dmitriev, a form of Memorial, the NGO for the protection of human rights and the preservation of the memory of the Gulag victims, is the first of three court appointments in three days in relation to this organization that is in danger of ban this week. “Yuri Dmitriev took 15 years,” Memorial told the Telegram channel. This sentence is two years heavier than the one announced in 2020 in the same case, and is considered by historians as retaliation for his investigations into Soviet-era persecution.
The verdict was announced by a court in Petrozavodsk in Karelia, a region of northern Russia where Dmitriev was the head of the local branch of the Memorial. The Memorial, a pillar of Russian civil society after the fall of the USSR, is faced with two trials, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, which will decide whether it will be outlawed.
The court battles of the past and the work of the historian
Dmitriev was arrested in 2016 on charges of child pornography because he had it in his possession nude photos of his adopted daughter, according to the ΑΠΕ-ΜΠΕ. He was acquitted in 2018, but after several appointments with justice, he was sentenced to 13 years in prison, a sentence that has been increased to 15 years today.
For many NGOs, Dmitriev pays the price for his research on extent of repression during the period of Stalinism, a page of History whose significance is trying to degrade the Kremlin because it opposes the official narrative of the heroism and greatness of Russia, the heir to the USSR.
Dmitriev, 64, has spent 30 years of his life training list of 40,000 people deported and executed under Stalin’s regime in Karelia, Russian region on the border with Finland. Under Vladimir Putin, a former agent of the KGB, the organization that inherited the policies of Lenin and Stalin’s police state, access to state records on these matters was severely curtailed and the identities of the perpetrators were kept secret.
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