I know a thing or two …” said DMITRIEV in a letter (see below) the day before the new sentence was announced.
Dmitriev’s words quoted above come from a letter he wrote to journalist Zoya Svetova. She received it on 26 December 2021. There he also said that in his Last Words to the court he declared he was proud to be a member of Memorial.
DMITRIEV’s friends and supporters from Moscow and Petersburg and his defence attorney Victor Anufriev are travelling north to Petrozavodsk to hear the announcement later this morning, writes Alla Shmaina-Velikanova.
Meanwhile, In Petrozavodsk Yury DMITRIEV and his family and friends are waiting for the morning. So are the city’s devout old men and women, outside the courthouse door in the frost.
Judge Khomyakova is also waiting for the dawn. Is she sleeping? What dreams does she see? Or is she awake?
Sever Real report by Anna Yarovaya and Yelena Vladykina
The High Court of Karelia has annulled the verdict passed earlier on Yury DMITRIEV by the Petrozavodsk City Court and in place of three years and six months has sentenced him to 13 years imprisonment.
On Wednesday, 22 July 2020, in a damp and windy Petrozavodsk, Victor Anufriev briefly addressed a large crowd of journalists and cameramen and women outside the City Court. According to BELSAT journalist Marina Makarova he indicated that his client Yury DMITRIEV had been found guilty and sentenced to three years six months’ imprisonment.
Taking into account the length of time DMITRIEV has already spent in detention centre No 1 in Petrozavodsk this means that he will be released on 12 November. Anufriev later specified that the sentence referred only to the charge of sexual abuse. (See 22 July report by Halya Coynash of the Kharkov Human Rights Group.)
Continue readingOn 16 June 2020, Petrozavodsk City Court in Karelia (Northwest Russia) will announce a verdict in Yury Dmitriev’s second trial, which began two years ago. If convicted, the 64-year-old historian and researcher into Stalin-era crimes could face up to 15 years in one of Russia’s crowded and unhealthy penal colonies.
If acquitted, Dmitriev will be freed from custody in a prison system affected, like the rest of the country, by a constant spreading of Covid-19.
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The Dmitriev Affair 