The Russian court extended the prison term of Gulag historian Yuri Dmitriev to 15 years, and his supporters said it was punishment for his work to expose crimes in the Stalin era.
Supporters say that 65-year-old Dmitriev was targeted because of his efforts to expose the terror of the Soviet era. Stalin.
Dmitriev is also the local head of the country’s most famous human rights organization Memorial Organization, which may be shut down by the court this week.
Last year, a court in northwestern Russia Sentenced to 13 years in prison for Dmitriev Sent to jail on a controversial allegation of child sexual abuse. In December last year, the prosecutor requested an extension of the sentence for two years.
On Monday, a court in Petrozavodsk extended the sentence of the historian at the request of the prosecutor.
“Give Yury Dmitriyev fifteen years,” the memorial wrote on Twitter.
Dmitriev spent decades searching and excavating mass graves of people killed under Stalin, and set up a monument for them in the Karelia region of northwestern Russia.
In recent years, he has faced a series of trials for multiple allegations including sexual abuse of adopted daughters. He has pleaded not guilty.
He was initially arrested in 2016 and accused of possessing child sexual abuse images in several nude photos of his adopted daughter, which he said he used to monitor her growth. The court acquitted him in 2018.
Surprisingly, the verdict of not guilty was later overturned by a higher court, and Dmitriev was retrial for a new charge of compulsive behavior involving children.
He was sentenced to three and a half years in prison in July 2020, most of which has been in pre-trial detention.
The prosecutor appealed the sentence, demanding a heavier sentence.
As a result, the Supreme Court of Karelia issued a new sentence in September 2020 and sent him to a heavily guarded criminal detention facility for 13 years.
The Memorial Rights Organization has declared Dmitriev a political prisoner and stated that the real reason for his prosecution seems to be “his activities in maintaining the memory of political repression.”
The memorial investigating the persecution of political prisoners during the Soviet era and the movement against today’s human rights violations said it may close before the end of the year.
