A Russian court has increased the sentence of historian Yury Dmitriyev, the local head of the human rights group Memorial in the northwestern region of Karelia, to 15 years in prison for allegedly taking pornographic images of his foster daughter, a charge he has staunchly denied.
The city court in Petrozavodsk on December 27 handed down the verdict after a review of the case against Dmitriyev, who in September 2020 was sentenced to 13 years in prison.
Prosecutors had been seeking an increase in the sentence to 15 years.
Dmitriyev’s lawyers have said that all of his appeals have been exhausted.
The trial comes as the Russian government is seeking to shut down International Memorial and the Memorial Human Rights Center in Moscow, both of which have long been designated “foreign agent” NGOs. Their fate could be sealed by the Supreme Court and Moscow’s top court in the coming weeks.
Dmitriyev is best known for his research into the victims of political repression in Karelia under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. He was instrumental in the investigation and memorialization of the Sandarmokh mass graves, where the bodies of at least 6,000 victims were buried.
As his case has gone back and forth between courts, Dmitriyev, who turns 66 next month, has spent almost all of the last five years in pretrial detention at a jail in Petrozavodsk, the regional capital.
