Yuri Alexeyevich DMITRIEV
Historian, author and head of the Karelian branch of the human rights centre Memorial, north-western Russia, Yuri Dmitriev continues to serve a 15-year prison sentence in a high-security penal colony after conviction of alleged sexual offences his supporters in the Russian Federation and abroad say are punishment for his research unearthing human rights abuses of the Stalin era, which he has published in several books. Dmitriev was arrested on 13 December 2016 and charged with making pornographic images of his adopted daughter and possessing an illegal firearm. He denied the charges, saying that the purpose of the photographs was to monitor the health of the child for social services. He spent more than a year in pre-trial detention.
On 5 April 2018, Dmitriev was cleared of the child pornography charges but was sentenced to two years and six months of probation (three months after deducting time spent in custody) and community service for illegally possessing components of a firearm. On 14 June 2018, the Karelian Supreme Court overturned his acquittal and placed him under new charges of ‘violent acts of a sexual nature in relation to a person who has not reached the age of fourteen’. Dmitriev subsequently underwent enforced psychiatric testing.
Both criminal cases against Dmitriev were merged in October 2018. On 22 July 2020, he was acquitted of the firearms charges and those of child pornography but was sentenced to a three-and-a-half-year term for sexual assault against an underage child. On 29 September 2020, the Karelia Supreme Court overturned the July acquittal relating to possession of firearms and sent the charges of child pornography for further expert ‘consideration’. It increased his sentence by another 10 years. The appeal hearing took place behind closed doors, without the presence of Dmitriev or his lawyer. On 27 December 2021, a court in Petrozavodsk increased his jail sentence to a total of 15 years. The sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court of the Republic of Karelia on 22 March 2022.
Yuri Dmitriev, born on 28 January 1956, is the author of several books, including Место расстрела Сандармох (Sandarmokh, a Place of Execution) (1999), Поминальные списки Карелии. Уничтоженная Карелия. Часть 2. Большой террор (The Karelian Lists of Remembrance: Murdered Karelia, part 2, The Great Terror) (2002) and Место памяти Сандармох (Sandarmokh, a Place of Remembrance) (2019). He continues to write from prison.
