A new assessment of the photographs of YURY DMITRIEV’s foster daughter was scheduled by the court: the photos constitute the main evidence against the head of the Memorial Society in Karelia. Yesterday, during the interval in the proceedings at this famous case, Dmitriev’s defence attorney VICTOR ANUFRIEV announced to waiting journalists that the new forensic experts had found no element of pornography in the photos. The defence had not yet had a chance to examine in detail the conclusions of the new experts, said Anufriev, adding that not one of the photographs of the child forming part of the prosecution case had been recognised as pornographic. “Furthermore, the [new] expert assessment confirmed that there had been no sexual motive in the preparation of the photographs,” added Anufriev, “only a concern to monitor the child’s health.”
The prosecution did not agree with the conclusions reached in the new assessment and, as Yury Dmitriev’s defence counsel said, the Petrozavodsk City Prosecutor, Yelena Askerova, intended to petition in the nearest future for yet another examination of the evidence. We may remind readers that the present experts were selected by the Federal Department of Independent Forensic Assessment, an organisation recommended to the court by none other than Prosecutor Askerova.
“Probably, they would like an expert assessment which says that Dmitriev is such and such a type, that the evidence is pornographic, and that he should be imprisoned,” remarked Anufriev, in conversation with journalists. The Petrozavodsk Prosecutor left the courtroom in an evident state of disappointment and was in a hurry to leave the courthouse.
The Dmitriev Affair 