- Russia: opponent Alexei Navalny closes his fight against corruption foundation
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July 22, 2020Russian historian Yuri Dmitriev, known for his research on Stalinist repression, was sentenced to three and a half years in prison after a controversial "sexual assault" trial. This was announced by his lawyer.Victor Anoufriev told reporters that the Petrozavodsk court found his client guilty of "sexual assault" on his adopted daughter and sentenced him to "three and a half years in a penal colony". According to supporters of the historian, with this story we wanted to target the work of Dmitriev on the Gulag: Dmitriev discovered in a forest in Karelia a mass grave with the remains of thousands of victims of the Stalinist repressions.
The prosecutors had requested 15 years of imprisonment for the 64-year-old, who rejects any accusation. Dmitriev had been acquitted in 2018 of similar pedophilia charges, but that same year the Karelian supreme court accepted the public prosecution's appeal and opened a new investigation against him.
Attorney Viktor Anufriev announced that "the sentence has been determined in three years and six months" and therefore, "around September 12" Dmitriev "will be free".