Trial

about arrest, investigation and trial – entire process

Defence experts cross-examined

/ editors (JC)

On 23 July, in a closed session at the city court in Petrozavodsk, two psychologists were questioned as expert witnesses for the defence in the second Dmitriev trial. Victor Anufriev, the defence attorney, said that their responses were very important for the case.

It was the third time the experts have made the journey north from Moscow and the first time they were called to testify.

“I can tell you the following,” said Anufriev to the 7×7 correspondent. “Today at the request of the defence expert psychologists from Moscow were questioned in court. I do not wish to name them. They gave their opinion and assessment of the procedural documents with which I provided them. I asked them questions and they gave answers.

“Let me add that the trial has not ended. It will continue on 3 September this year.”

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What is going on?

/ editors (JC)

The other day the latest hearing in the new trial of Yury DMITRIEV took place. It has been six weeks since the Petrozavodsk City Court, in closed regime, heard more evidence from the prosecution.

This time round, clearly, there is no rush to convict and, it would seem, a preference for people elsewhere, e.g. supporters in Russia who travel to Karelia to wait outside the courtroom or the courthouse in a demonstration of solidarity, to be denied anything to discuss.

That includes curious foreigners.

True, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov did respond to a question about the case from a Finnish journalist when he was abroad … The reply was not reassuring. More tomorrow.

JC

The last resting place of Les Kurbas

/ editors (JC)

Acclaimed curator and theatre director from New York Virlana Tkacz and artist Waldemart Klyuzko will give a talk in London tonight about Les KURBAS, Ukraine’s most important theatre director, who radically transformed Ukrainian theatre in the 1920s.

Kurbas lecture poster, May 2019

Wednesday, 8 May, 7 pm
Main Hall of the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family,
21 Binney Street, Mayfair, London W1K 5BQ

Kurbas and almost three hundred other representatives of Ukraine’s intelligentsia were shot at Sandarmokh between 27 October and 4 November 1937. They have become known as Ukraine’s “Executed Renaissance”.

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Were last year’s excavations at Sandarmokh legal?

/ editors (JC) / 1 Comment

As the prosecution continues to present its evidence of “new offences” by Yury DMITRIEV at his second trial in the Petrozavodsk City Court in Karelia, a related dispute is being pursued at the national level over the identity of those executed and buried at Sandarmokh.

In early February, the Kommersant daily newspaper reported
on this “second front” in the Dmitriev Affair.

Sandarmokh, Solovki transport memorial (photo Kurilova)

Solovki transport memorial, Sandarmokh (photo, Anastasia Kurilova, August 2018)

In January 2019 there was an appeal for Yury Chaika, the Russian Federation’s Prosecutor General, to personally investigate the excavations at Sandarmokh last year by the Military History Society (MHS).

The request came from a deputy of the Karelian Legislative Assembly, Emilia Slabunova of the Yabloko Party. The authorities, she believes, had confused the status of memorial complex with “a site of interest” when granting permission for the MHS to carry out its exploratory excavations. She was referring to the archaeological investigation carried out by the Society at Sandarmokh between 25 August and 5 September 2018.

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A 63rd birthday in detention

/ editors (JC)

The day before his 62nd birthday, last year, Yury DMITRIEV was released from detention and could spend the day with friends and family. This year, as his second trial continues, he is remanded in custody at Detention Centre No 1 in Petrozavodsk.

happy birthday.jpg

One-person picket outside Presidential Administration
in Moscow, 28 January 2019.