Russia The sentence of Yuri Dmitrijev, a historian and discoverer of mass graves in Karelia, has been extended again – now from 13 to 15 years

Russian court has been extended by the historian Yuri Dmitryev 13 years in prison for 15 years. News agencies, for example, report this Reuters and Russian Ria Novosti.

Dmitrijev, 65, was controversially convicted in July 2020 of child sexual abuse. He was first sentenced in the Petrozavodsk City Court to 3.5 years in a prison camp. However, in September of the same year the sentence was extended to 13 years in the Supreme Court of the Republic of Karelia.

Read more: The right of appeal has increased the prison sentence of Yuri Dmitrijev, the finder of the Karelian mass graves, from 3.5 to 13 years

Dmitrijev has also been accused of possessing images depicting the sexual exploitation of children. The pictures were of her foster daughter. Dmitrijev was acquitted in 2018 until the higher court overturned the acquittal two months later.

Dmitry is a well-known dictator Joseph Stalin persecutor. He has worked especially in Karelia, where he found a psychologist Ivan Chukhin with the 1997 Sandarmoh Mass Graves. Up to 10,000 victims of persecution have been buried in the area.

Read more: Yuri Dmitrijev’s observation in a cloth forest in Karelia revealed more than a thousand Finnish mass graves, and perhaps that is why he is facing a long prison sentence today

Dmitrijev is also the head of the Karelian branch of the human rights organization Memorial. Memorial considers him a political prisoner accused of his work as a historian. Proponents of Dmitryev have also considered the charges fabricated and the sentences punished for exposing Stalin’s persecution. The Finnish PEN Freedom of Expression is demanded the release of Dmitryev.

The U.S. embassy has condemned the length of Dmitryev’s prison sentence and called it a setback for human rights and “historical truths” to Russia.

“I am ashamed of what is happening,” says a historian who studied the victims of the Soviet persecution. Anatoli Razumov news agency for AFP.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has denied that Dmitryev ‘s verdict was political.

Tuesday Russia’s Supreme Court is considering the closure of the Memorial Human Rights Center. The center is accused of violating Russia’s “foreign agent law.” By law, foreign-funded organizations and the media can be appointed as foreign agents.