Dmitryev was sentenced in the first instance for sexual violence to 3.5 years in prison, he left the court on Tuesday with 13 years in prison, Russian media reported. Critics consider the process to be contrived, aimed at discrediting the historian and devaluing his work.
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In July, the Petrozavodsk City Court acquitted Dmitrijev in the first instance of charges concerning the production of child pornography, misconduct against a minor girl and illegal possession of part of a firearm. However, he found him guilty of violent sexual behavior towards a child and sentenced him to 3.5 years in prison for it. Due to the long detention, the convict could be back at large in the autumn.
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However, the Supreme Court of the Karelia region, whose capital is Petrozavodsk, drastically increased the sentence of imprisonment on Tuesday in a court of appeal. In addition, however, he referred the acquitting verdict on a new hearing to the lower court on the three points mentioned above.
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The historian and director of the Karelian branch of the non-governmental association Memorial, which focuses on documenting political repression and the protection of human rights, was arrested in December 2016. The victim of his alleged lustful and violent behavior was to be his adopted daughter. He was accused of producing child pornography for photos showing his daughter naked. Dmitrijev claimed to have documented her condition because she had been extremely thin and often ill since birth.
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Sixty-four-year-old Dmitrijev compiled a list of 40,000 people executed and deported from Karelia during Stalin’s terror over 30 years. He also discovered one of the largest execution sites in the area, where 9,000 people were shot dead.
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According to the AFP agency, these historian’s discoveries do not fit into current efforts to rehabilitate the Stalinist regime. For example, one of the pro-government organizations on the burial ground of purgatory victims claimed that it was the remains of Soviet soldiers executed by Finns during World War II.
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Most of Karelia used to be part of Finland before the Soviet Union seized it after the so-called Winter War at the turn of 1939 and 1940.
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