The head of the Karelian "Memorial", historian Yuri Dmitriev, who is serving 15 years in a strict regime colony in Mordovia, was sent to a punishment cell for the third time in a month. This is reported by the Society "Memorial".
“The official reasons for the imprisonment of the 66-year-old historian in the ShIZO look like a formal reason for placing him in worse conditions: he did not greet the representative of the administration in form; kept a pet on the bed (during the day a cat slept there, which Yury Alekseevich feeds); did not remove his hands behind his back during the withdrawal, ”the message says.
Dmitriev will be released from the isolation ward on October 1.
The historian is serving his sentence in IK-18 in the village of Potma. He was detained in 2016 on charges of making pornography with the participation of his adopted daughter. Two years later, he was 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 to 3.5 years in prison. The historian pleaded not guilty.
At the end of September of the same year, the Supreme Court of Karelia increased the sentence under the first article 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 a new trial in the new composition of the Petrozavodsk court.
At the end of December 2021, Dmitriev's sentence was increased to 15 years.
As director of the Karelian "Memorial" Dmitriev studied the mass graves in Sandarmokh and Krasny Bor. In total, about 150 grave pits were recorded and marked, in which there could be about 4.5 thousand bodies of people who were shot during the years of Stalinist repressions.
More than 400 scientists and artists from Europe and the United States signed an open appeal demanding the release of the historian. Earlier, Yuri Dmitriev received the Moscow Helsinki Group Prize for his historical contribution to the protection of human rights and the human rights movement.