The Supreme Court will review the case of the historian Yuri Dmitriev, who was sentenced to 13 years in prison

The Supreme Court requested for verification the materials of the case of the head of the Karelian branch of Memorial, historian Yuri Dmitriev, who was sentenced to 13 years on charges of “violent acts of a sexual nature” (part 3.4 of Article 132 of the Criminal Code), should from the card index on the court’s website. About this also reported in the Telegram channel “Case Dmitriev”.

The historian’s lawyers filed a complaint against the verdict with the Supreme Court at the end of June. The decision to reclaim the case was made on the last day of the period allotted for consideration of the application. In February, the Third General Jurisdiction Court of Cassation upheld Dmitriev’s verdict unchanged, “despite the violations that took place during the review of the case on appeal,” stated lawyers.

Yuri Dmitriev was detained in 2016 on charges of producing pornography involving his adopted daughter. Two years later, the historian acquitted, but later the court overturned the acquittal. In 2018, another case was added to the charge – about violent actions against a child. In the summer of 2020, the Petrozavodsk City Court sentenced Dmitriev by 3.5 years in prison. The historian did not admit his guilt.

Later, at the end of September of the same year, the Supreme Court of Karelia increased punishment under the first article up to 13 years. At the same time, the court overturned the acquittal under articles on the production of pornography, indecent acts and possession of weapons. These cases were sent for new consideration in the new composition of the Petrozavodsk court.

As director of the Karelian “Memorial” Dmitriev was studying the mass grave he discovered in Sandarmokh and Krasny Bor. In total, about 150 burial pits were recorded and marked, in which about 4.5 thousand bodies of people who were shot during the years of Stalin’s repressions could have been.