7 Jul 2020 21:33

Public prosecution asks court to sentence Karelia Memorial leader Dmitriyev to 15 years in jail

PETROZAVODSK. July 7 (Interfax) - A prosecutor has asked the court to sentence the leader of Karelia Memorial Yury Dmitriyev, earlier charged with sexually abusing his adopted daughter, to 15 years in jail, lawyer Viktor Anufriyev said.

"The public prosecution has asked for 15 years [in prison]," Anufriyev told Interfax on Tuesday.

A representative of the Petrozavodsk City Court told Interfax earlier that the judicial investigation of the Dmitriyev case had been completed.

On April 5, 2018, the Petrozavodsk City Court fully acquitted Dmitriyev of producing child pornography and molesting his adopted daughter and recognized his right to rehabilitation and compensation. The court, however, found Dmitriyev guilty of illegally storing parts of a shotgun and sentenced him to 30 months of restricted freedom, counting the period he had spent in a detention facility. The prosecution had sought nine years in a high-security penal colony for Dmitriyev in a consolidated sentencing.

However, on June 14, 2018, the Supreme Court of Karelia reversed the sentence handed down by the first-instance court and sent the Dmitriyev case for a retrial. Two weeks later, on June 27, Dmitriyev was detained on suspicion of molesting his adopted daughter. He was arrested the day after.

On April 9, 2020, an official with the European External Action Service (EEAS) said he doubted the motives of Dmitriyev's arrest and called for a revision of his case.

In early May 2020, some 150 scientists and culture figures wrote an open letter to Anatoly Nakvas, president of Karelia's Supreme Court, asking to release Dmitriyev and give him a penalty that does not involve imprisonment due to coronavirus infection identified in the detention facility where Dmitryiev was being held. The court left the measure of restraint (custody) unchanged.

On June 15, authors Svetlana Alexievich, Nobel Prize laureate in literature, 2015, Herta Müller, Nobel Prize laureate in literature, 2009, and Jonathan Littell, winner of the Prix Goncourt and the Prix de l'Académie française, 2006, signed a letter to Dunja Mijatovic, Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, titled 'Truth in Dmitriev's case - this is what we speak up for'.

Dmitriyev has compiled books in memory of victims of the mass repressions that took place in Karelia in 1930s and 1940s. He has discovered mass graves of repression victims in Karelia's Sandarmokh and Krasny Bor.