"The executioners vivified": the historian Dmitriyev is decided to die in prison

Two very unpleasant news that exhaustively characterize the inhuman essence of the Russian state came today from the law enforcement agencies of Russia.

First, the prosecutor's office appealed the terms of the persons involved in the case of New Greatness, reports TASS. "The court received an appeal from the prosecutor's office against the verdict, which says that it does not agree with the punishment and considers it excessively lenient", - the agency quotes a spokesman for the press service of the Lublin court in Moscow. In August 2020, seven people accused of creating an extremist community received from four years probation to seven years in prison. The verdict was also appealed by the defense. According to the investigation, the alleged participants in the New Greatness planned to seize power in Russia. The defendants said that the idea to create the movement belonged to an embedded FSB officer.

Journalist Kirill Shulika writes about this:

“The prosecutor’s office did not agree with the verdict on the members of the“ New Greatness ”youth community, who were found guilty of extremism, and appealed the terms of their sentences as too lenient. That is, it is obvious that they want to imprison everyone, including girls, for real terms ... And for such prosecutors in hell there will be some kind of separate frying pan. What cannibals, eh ... "

Journalist Anna Narinskaya exclaims:

“This is just the apotheosis of cruelty and injustice. The apotheosis of our state, that is..."

The second piece of news is even more startling:

“The Supreme Court of Karelia has changed the verdict for the head of the local branch of Memorial, Yuri Dmitriyev", - said Igor Perov, a lawyer for Dmitriyev’s adopted daughter.

Now, under the article on violent acts of a sexual nature, according to which the first instance court appointed Dmitriyev 3.5 years in prison, the historian was assigned 13 years in a maximum security colony. For the rest of the articles, according to which the court of first instance acquitted the historian, the case was sent for review to the Petrozavodsk City Court. The appeals were filed by the defense, the state prosecution and the lawyer of the victim girl. The whole process took place behind closed doors.

Criminal cases on the production of pornography and lecherous acts were opened in 2016 because of nine photographs of Dmitriyev's naked daughter at the age of three, four and six. According to the historian, he took the first four pictures at the request of his daughter, four more - when she got a pain in the groin, the last - after she felt discomfort in the groin, riding a pony, wrote "Novaya Gazeta". Dmitriyev was also charged with possession of weapons because of a piece of the barrel from an old hunting rifle. In 2018, Dmitriyev was acquitted in the case initiated over the photographs, and was sentenced to 2.5 years of restriction of freedom under the article on keeping weapons. A few months later, the acquittal was canceled.

Soon, the historian was sent to a pre-trial detention center on a new criminal case - about sexual assault. According to Novaya Gazeta, Dmitriyev was accused of touching the crotch of an eight-year-old girl several times. The defendant explained that he was checking the dryness of the clothes, since his daughter was ill with enuresis. As noted by the publication, the hospital discharge confirms that she was being treated for the disease. Yuri Dmitriyev is known for his studies of mass graves during the Great Terror and the foundation of the Sandormokh memorial complex in Karelia..."

Political strategist Gleb Pavlovsky commented on this court decision:

“The executioners perked up. Turbulence in the apparatus does not reduce the risks to humans..."

Dmitriyev did not help either the open letter that yesterday to the Chairman of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Karelia Anatoly Nakvas was sent by the most prominent representatives of the Russian intelligentsia, including Academician Yevgeny Alexandrov, and the widow of Alexander Solzhenitsyn Natalya Solzhenitsyna, and actor Oleg Basilashvili, and many, many others:

“Dear Anatoly Vladimirovich!

For three and a half years, the courts of various instances of the Republic of Karelia have been considering the case of the historian and ethnographer Yuri Alekseevich Dmitriyev, the discoverer of the mass graves of victims of Stalin's repressions on the territory of the Sandarmokh tract. This is a case, the outcome of which, without exaggeration, is followed by tens of thousands of various people in Russia and around the world. The persecution of Dmitriyev, as we remember, was based on an anonymous denunciation and a kind of "written opinion" of the Karelian art critic Sergeev, based on this denunciation, and in two photographs of Dmitriyev's adopted daughter from his personal computer, it is not known how they ended up in the Investigative Committee.

The illegality of these actions and the absurdity of the accusations against the historian of disseminating pornography and lewd acts against an underage adopted daughter at first left no doubt that the “Dmitriyev case” had no criminal prospects and would be closed. But the case was set in motion. We assume that the security forces were behind this, dissatisfied with Dmitriyev's civil position and Yuri Alekseevich's enormous work to perpetuate the memory of the victims of Stalinism.

Despite all the pressure exerted, the Petrozavodsk City Court (judge Marina Nosova) fully acquits Dmitriyev under the “bad” articles, and then a new, much more serious charge is brought against him - committing sexual violence against a child. On appeal, the Supreme Court of the Republic of Karelia overturns the acquittal and sends the case for new consideration.

And then the incredible happens - the Petrozavodsk City Court (judge Alexander Merkov) acquits Dmitriyev for the second time under the same articles, and on the new charge gives a punishment much lower than the lower limit, which - we all perfectly understand this - once again speaks of Yuri Dmitriev's innocence and at the same time the impossibility of admitting this innocence due to the unprecedented pressure on the court of those who cannot forgive the historian for his studies of the Gulag past. The two excuses under the harsh articles clearly show that there were no grounds for either criminal prosecution, much less for detention, which the Supreme Court of the Republic of Karelia insisted on every time. This allows us to believe that the court was biased then and simply cannot make a fair decision now.

The appeal is being considered by judge Alla Rats, who previously twice extended Dmitriyev's detention in the pre-trial detention center, and everything that happens in this process gives us reason to doubt the objectivity of the judging and, moreover, to assume that pressure is being exerted on the judge.

How else to explain the following facts:

Instead of waiting for the release of the coronavirus quarantine from the permanent lawyer Dmitriyev V.M. Anufriev, who notified the court about the impossibility of being at the hearing, the judge immediately introduces the appointed attorney into the process and sets a period of three working days to get acquainted with the case. Can you get acquainted with such an endless number of documents, examinations, decisions and sentences in three days? Of course not. Should the appointed lawyer meet with his client? Don't just have to - you must. But he never does it.

Here is how Yuri Alekseevich himself writes about this in a letter to his friends on September 23: “... I loudly and clearly, on the record, announced my refusal from a lawyer by appointment. As predicted, my loud and clear refusal was ignored by the court. In the evening I repeated it in writing. My humble request to let me into the courtroom in person and in person was completely rejected by the court. Another "teardrop" I had was sounded - to conduct a medical examination of hearing in the direction of the court: I do not always and do not hear everything and understand that the judge in the hall is voicing, forty percent goes by. This is not good for protection. The judge politely asked if I had any medical documents confirming the hearing loss. No, I say. Since there are no documents, the application should be refused. I have already got the "local staff" with this problem. They brought additional speakers - they are not connected. I keep asking again. The judge is angry and threatens to remove him from the courtroom. Every time I remind the court that I was left alone with legal issues, practically without defense - this irritates the judge, to put it mildly. What should I do? Living is always difficult. "

Tell me, how is it at all possible that during a hearing on such an important case in the Supreme Court of the Republic the sound does not work or does not work well, and the defendant actually remains without competent defense? And how is it possible that a sudden appointment of a new examination of photographs in a pornography case, in which Dmitriyev is TWICE, is acquitted? Is it possible that the numerous examinations at the Serbian Institute, a specialized psychiatric hospital in St. Petersburg, which proved the complete absence of "pedophile" thoughts and sexual deviations in Dmitriev's behavior, taken by the courts of first instance, are empty words for the court of appeal? Just as the opinions of photography experts, among whom were employees of the State Hermitage, candidates and doctors of sciences, who did not see anything pornographic in the photographs, turn out to be an empty sound?

Fearing the bias of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Karelia in the case of Yuri Dmitriyev, we ask you, Anatoly Vladimirovich, to refer this case to a court of any other region, republic or territory of the Russian Federation. And to those who started all this dirty business, we would like to say only one thing: you can break the life of the historian Dmitriyev, his adopted daughter, all his relatives, but it is impossible to destroy or remove the historical truth from circulation.

She will survive under any circumstances and will remind of herself.

RAS Academicians

Evgeny Alexandrov

Efim Khazanov

RAS Corresponding Members

Alexander Belavin

Elizaveta Bonch-Osmolovskaya

Mikhail Glazov

Askold Ivanchik

Alexander Kabanov

Fyodor Uspensky

Actors

Leah Akhedzhakova

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Anatoly Bely

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Veniamin Smekhov

Natalia Tenyakova

Alexander Filippenko

Konstantin Khabensky

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Journalists

Nadezhda Azhgikhina

Ekaterina Barabash

Katerina Gordeeva

Christina Gorelik

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Elena Kleschenko

Ksenia Larina

Leonid Nikitinsky

Olga Orlova

Sergey Parkhomenko

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Nikolay Podosokorsky

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Mikhail Shevelev

Olga Shutova

Anna and Gleb Yarovye

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Irina Balakhonova

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Andrey Zbarsky

Irina Prokhorova

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Galina Aksenova

Andrey Bilzho

Anatoly Golubovsky

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Historians

Irina Arzhantseva

Cecile Vessier (France)

Mikhail Krom

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Joseph Reichelgauz

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Alexander Manotskov

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Georgy Bazykin

Sergey Dmitriev

Aleksey Ivanov

Sergey Zenkin

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Irina Nasimova

Daniil Naumov

Daria Novgorodova

Alla Ratyn

Zhanna Reznikova

Andrey Rostovtsev

Alexey Semenov

Mikhail Tamm

Mikhail Feigelman

Andrey Tsaturyan

Iskandar Yasaveev

Vladislav Aksenov

Vladimir Ananich

Irina Antipova

Anna Boykova

Andrey Guskov

Dmitry Rybakov

Natalia Tumashkova

Sergey Dmitriev

Irina Kravtsova

Vadim Lurie

Nikolay Epple

Human rights defenders

Svetlana Astrakhantseva

Vyacheslav Bakhmin

Valery Borshchev

Svetlana Gannushkina

Igor Kalyapin

Dmitry Makarov

Lev Ponomarev

Natalia Taubina

Politicians, Yabloko party

Boris Vishnevsky

Nikolay Rybakov

Emilia Slabunova

Lev Schlosberg

Grigory Yavlinsky

Human Rights Center "Memorial"

Oleg Orlov

Yan Rachinsky

Alexander Cherkasov

President of the Russian Public Foundation Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Natalia Solzhenitsyna

Director of the Ioffe Foundation

Irina Flige

Project manager “Sandarmokh. Returning names "

Maxim Lyalin

Head of the Center "Returned Names" at the National Library of Russia

Anatoly Razumov

Education workers

Dmitry Ablov

Elena Kozlova

Lana Cruz

Leonid Perlov

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Father Alexey Uminsky

Father Grigory Mikhnov-Vaitenko

IT workers

Larisa Melikhova

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Igor Ilyin

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