Russian historian Yuri Dmitriev, known for his work on the Gulag and repression during the Stalinist era, was sentenced to 13 years in a strict regime camp for sexual violence against a child, has announced Tuesday, September 29 the Supreme Court of Karelia (north-west).
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This 64-year-old historian, who conducted research with the organization Memorial to find mass graves containing the remains of victims of Stalinist terror, was arrested in 2016 on charges of child pornography for photographs of his adopted daughter.
He had assured that these photos of the naked girl were intended to follow her growth and had been acquitted in 2018.
But this verdict had been challenged by a higher legal body and he had to appear again in court with new, heavier charges of sexual violence against a child.
Yuri Dmitriev was sentenced in July to three and a half years in prison, a sentence he has largely served in pre-trial detention.
But prosecutors appealed the sentence, asking for a heavier sentence, while Mr Dmitriev appealed to request that the charges against him be quashed.
Heavier sentence than the previous one
As a result, the Karelian Supreme Court handed down a heavier sentence that overturns the previous one.
"
Dmitriev was found guilty of committing a crime punishable by 13 years of detention in a camp with severe regimes
", according to the statement of the judgment.
The judgment was denounced by the Memorial organization as "
politically motivated
".
"
It is obvious that the verdict is not based on the law, that this verdict is politically motivated,
" Memorial official Oleg Orlov told Echo radio in Moscow.
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“
Memorial and the defense will fight against this sentence,
” with an appeal to a Russian higher court and a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights, he said.
Yuri Dmitriev spent decades locating mass graves and exhuming the remains of victims of Stalinist repression, including in Gulag forced labor camps.
Memorial considers Dmitriev a political prisoner, believing that the real reason for the charges against him was "
his activity to preserve the memory
" of the victims of political repression.
The organization is harassed by the Russian authorities, who consider it "
a foreign agent
".