Petrozavodsk city court found the head of the Karelian “Memorial” Yuri Dmitriev guilty of molesting his daughter and sentenced him to 3.5 years in prison. Given the time spent in jail, the historian will be released in early September of this year.
This is an indication that the court also considered the case frivolous, expressed his opinion to the correspondent of “Rosbalt” historian, Director of the programme centres of the European University in St. Petersburg Ivan kurilla.
“our power, we fear the worst, and it’s not a bad option. Although, of course, unfair to that person for so many years kept in custody, and the girl who was at the center of the investigation, deprived of a normal life in the family. But such a sentence is, in fact, the recognition of the court that the case is far-fetched, and I think a big problem of the Russian justice system that it cannot justify. In this case, of course the verdict was an acquittal,” — said the historian.
According to him, such an outcome is largely the merit of civil society, which did not lose sight of the fact Dmitriev. On the court to the head of the Karelian “Memorial” went historians and human rights activists from St. Petersburg and Moscow, despite the fact that the meeting was closed.
“We, however, remember that once Dmitrieva already justified, and then it all started again. I hope this time this will not happen,” said Ivan kurilla.
the Historian is confident that 3.5 years in prison instead of 15 years is a sign that “creeping Stalinization” of Russian society, with which he connected the two, “the works of Dmitriev,” met with resistance companies.
“We don’t know who was behind the persecution Dmitrieva, there are different hypotheses. Perhaps it was someone from the local Karelian descendants of the NKVD, which took him years of work to restore the memory of the victims repressiy as a private matter. Or representatives of power of the elites thought that the situation in the country is changing in the direction of Stalinization. Indeed, in 2016, we saw in different parts of the country have erected monuments to Stalin, a case of Dmitriyev really fit in this context,” said Ivan kurilla.
we will Remind, Yury Dmitriev was one of the found in the Sandarmokh mass grave of 7.6 thousand people were executed in Karelia during the great terror of 1937-1938. He found in the archives of the hit acts of the NKVD and reinstated many of the individual killed. Human rights activists and historians have noted that this work “aroused the wrath of the FSB”, which Dmitriev “tried to put on dirty paper”. In December 2016 Karelian historian Yuri Dmitriev was arrested on charges of manufacturing child pornography, according to investigators, he shot his adopted daughter. In 2018 he was acquitted, but soon the Supreme court of Karelia canceled the acquittal. The second time the Prosecutor was required to assign at least 15 years in prison.
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