Watchdog

PETROZAVODSK, Russia -- Prosecutors have asked a court in Russia's northwestern Karelia region to sentence Yury Dmitriyev, a Russian historian and human rights activist, to 15 years in prison on charges of sexually assaulting his adopted daughter -- an allegation he and his supporters deny.

The prosecution argued its case in Petrozavodsk City Court against the 64-year-old head of the Karelia branch of the Moscow-based human rights group Memorial as the high-profile trial entered its final stage on July 7.

Supporters of Dmitriyev, who is also a renowned gulag researcher, have said the charges were brought against him because of his research into a side of history that complicates the Kremlin's glorification of the Soviet past.

Dmitriyev's decades-long efforts to expose the extent of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's crimes have been viewed with hostility by the government of President Vladimir Putin.

In May, dozens of Russian scholars, historians, writers, poets, opposition politicians, artists, and actors signed an open letter asking the Karelia Supreme Court to release Dmitriyev, expressing concerns over the researcher's health as cases of the coronavirus have been found in the detention center where he is being held.

The European Union has called on the Russian authorities to release Dmitriyev and reconsider the charges against him.

Dmitriyev was arrested in 2016 on child-pornography charges based on photographs of his adopted daughter that authorities found on his computer.

He has proclaimed his innocence, contending that the images were not pornographic and were made at the request of social workers concerned about the child’s development. He says the case is an attempt to thwart his research into extrajudicial executions in Karelia under Stalin.

A local court acquitted Dmitriyev in April 2018, but the Karelia Supreme Court subsequently upheld an appeal by prosecutors and ordered a new trial.

The historian was rearrested in June 2018 and is currently on trial on the more severe charge of "violent acts of a sexual nature committed against a person under 14 years of age."

SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine -- Russian authorities have detained seven Crimean Tatar activists after searching their homes in different parts of Ukraine's Moscow-controlled Crimea region.

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said in a statement that it had detained "three leaders and four members of the banned Hizb ut-Tahrir Islamic group" in Crimea on July 7.

Since Russia forcibly annexed Crimea in March 2014, Russian authorities have prosecuted dozens of Crimean Tatars for allegedly belonging to the Hizb ut-Tahrir Islamic group, which is banned in Russia but not in Ukraine.

The Crimean Solidarity rights group that has members in Crimea and other parts of Ukraine said on July 7 that FSB officers had detained Seyran Hayretdinov, Emil Ziyadinov, Ismet Ibragimov, Alim Sufyanov, Vadim Bektemirov, and a legally blind activist, Aleksandr Sizikov, after their homes were searched.

Ukrainian Ombudswoman Lyudmila Densyova said that the seventh man detained by the FSB in Crimea was Zekirya Muratov.

The house belonging to another Crimean Tatar activist, Dilyaver Memetov, was searched without his presence and Russia-controlled authorities are looking for him, the Crimean Solidarity said.

The authorities of the exiled Ukrainian regional authorities of Crimea condemned the searches and detainments and launched a probe into them.

The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine also voiced concern over the searches and detainments.

"Russia has no right to harass and detain Ukrainians on Ukrainian soil. Russia must free all Ukrainian political prisoners," the embassy wrote on Facebook.

Moscow’s takeover of the peninsula was vocally opposed by many Crimean Tatars, who are a sizable minority in the region.

Exiled from their homeland to Central Asia by the Soviet authorities under dictator Josef Stalin during World War II, many Crimean Tatars are very wary of Russia and Moscow's rule.

Rights groups and Western governments have denounced what they describe as a campaign of repression by the Moscow-imposed authorities in Crimea who are targeting members of the Turkic-speaking Crimean Tatar community and others who have spoken out against Moscow's takeover of the peninsula.

In its annual report on religious freedom worldwide, released in April 2019, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) said that "[in] Russian-occupied Crimea, the Russian authorities continued to kidnap, torture, and imprison Crimean Tatar Muslims at will."

Russia took control of Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014 after sending in troops, seizing key facilities, and staging a referendum dismissed as illegal by at least 100 countries. Moscow also backs separatists in a war against government forces that has killed some 13,200 people in eastern Ukraine since April 2014.

With reporting by TASS and Interfax