A recent post on the website of the Petrozavodsk City Court reports that Yury DMITRIEV’s appeal of 21 December has been forwarded to the Third Cassation Court in St Petersburg. The appeal objects to the decisions handed down by the Supreme Court of Karelia on 29 September: Dmitriev’s term of imprisonment was increased almost fourfold from 3 ½ to 13 years in a strict regime penal colony; and the three other charges were returned to the city court to be re-examined a third time.
Continue readingTrial
about arrest, investigation and trial – entire process
Timeline (2), 2018-2021
2018
14 June — DMITRIEV’s acquittal on charges of child pornography (Article 242.3) and perverted acts with a minor (135) overturned by Supreme Court of Karelia.
Football World Cup opens in Russia.

Sergei Koltyrn (1953-2020)
28 June — DMITRIEV re-arrested and again held in Detention Centre 1 in Petrozavodsk.
Further charges brought against DMITRIEV under Part 4 of Article 132.
10 August — DMITRIEV returns to Detention Centre No 1 after a psychiatric assessment at Hospital No 6 in St Petersburg.
27 August — Russian Military History Society begins two weeks of excavations at Sandarmokh.
Timeline (1), 1997-2018
In early July 1997, DMITRIEV together with Irina Flige and the late Veniamin Joffe discovered a huge killing field of the Great Terror near Medvezhegorsk in Karelia. Subsequently it became known as Sandarmokh.
Weeks later, in early September, he and Sergei Chugunkov identify the Krasny Bor killing field and burial ground not far from Petrozavodsk, the capital of Karelia.
Continue readingRound Three: November 2020
Next week the charges against Yury DMITRIEV will be examined, once again, in the Petrozavodsk City Court. The first hearing in the new trial is scheduled for Tuesday, 24 November (on the court’s website it was announced that the trial would begin on Wednesday, 18 November, but the later date was agreed and confirmed with Dmitriev’s defence).
This will be the third time Yury Dmitriev has been put on trial for the same crimes. Twice the Petrozavodsk City Court has found the historian not guilty of preparing child pornography or committing depraved acts against his foster daughter. On a further charge of illegal possession of a firearm he was found guilty in 2018, but acquitted in 2020.
Continue readingAnother look at those nine photographs?
At the Supreme Court hearing on 22 September in Petrozavodsk, Judge Alla Rats requested another expert assessment of the photographs on Yury DMITRIEV’s home computer that formed the pretext for his arrest on 13 December 2016.
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