The Supreme Court of Russia's northwestern region of Karelia has upheld the sentence of historian Yury Dmitriyev, the local head of the human rights group Memorial.
The court on March 15 rejected Dmitriyev's appeal against a December decision by the Petrozavodsk city court to increase his sentence from 13 years to 15 years in prison for allegedly taking pornographic images of his foster daughter, a charge he has staunchly denied.
The high-profile case dates back to 2016, when Dmitriyev, who has spent decades researching extrajudicial executions carried out in Karelia under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, was arrested over the photographs, which authorities found on his computer.
Dmitriyev said the images were not pornographic and were made at the request of social workers concerned about the child’s physical development.
He was acquitted in April 2018, but the Karelia Supreme Court upheld an appeal by prosecutors and ordered a new trial. He was rearrested in June 2018 and charged with the more serious crime of sexual assault against a minor.
In July 2020, Dmitriyev was sentenced to 3 1/2 years on a conviction for “violent acts of a sexual nature committed against a person under 14 years of age.” He has rejected the case, insisting that he is being targeted because of his research into the crimes of Stalin's regime.
Prosecutors, who had asked for 15 years in prison in the high-profile case, said the original sentence was "too lenient" and appealed it. Dmitriyev's defense team, meanwhile, insisted their client was innocent and also appealed the case.
In late September 2020 weeks before he was due to be released because of time served, the Supreme Court of Karelia accepted the prosecutors' appeal and added another 9 1/2 years onto Dmitriyev's sentence.
Dozens of Russian and international scholars, historians, writers, poets, and others have issued statements in support of the scholar, while the European Union has called for Dmitriyev to be released.
Dmitriyev’s research has been viewed with hostility by the government of President Vladimir Putin. Under Putin, Stalin has undergone a gradual rehabilitation, and the Russian government has emphasized his leadership of the Soviet Union while downplaying his crimes against Soviet citizens.
Under Stalin, millions of people were executed, sent to labor camps, or starved to death in famines caused by forced collectivization. During World War II, entire ethnic groups were deported to remote areas as collective punishment for alleged collaboration with the Nazis.