MOSCOW (Reuters) – A Russian court on Monday increased the jail sentence served by historian Yuri Dmitriev to 15 years in a case of sexual abuse of his adopted daughter, according to a statement posted on the court’s website.
Dmitriev’s attorney said he would appeal the ruling, independent outlet Sota Vision reported.
His supporters denounce fabricated accusations to punish him for having located mass graves of the gulags of the Stalinist era.
Dmitriev, who worked with the Memorial group for the defense of human rights and memory of the Soviet repression, was convicted in July 2020 – a decision he appealed but which the Russian Supreme Court refused to consider in October.
The historian was initially sentenced to a three-and-a-half-year sentence and was due for release in November 2020, but a few weeks before that date, the Petrozavodsk Municipal Court in northwest Russia increased his sentence to 13. years in prison.
The NGO Memorial is threatened with closure in Russia at the request of the public prosecution, which accuses it of not having registered with the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation as an “foreign agent” as the ‘demands the law.
Human rights defenders denounce the Russian authorities’ desire to block the work of recognizing Soviet repression under Stalin.
Last year, the U.S. Embassy described Dmitriev’s long jail term as a setback to human rights and historical truth in Russia. The Kremlin said it was not involved in the matter.
(Report Alexander Marrow and Anton Kolodyazhnyy; French version Dina Kartit, edited by Jean-Stéphane Brosse)
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