A court in Petrozavodsk has increased the prison sentence for the Russian historian and human rights activist Yuriy Dmitriev by two years from 13 to 15 years.

The court thereby granted an application from the public prosecutor's office.

The head of the Karelian branch of the human rights organization Memorial is charged with alleged sexual assault on his adoptive daughter, who was born in 2005.

The sixty-five year old denies the allegations. 

Sofia Dreisbach

Editor in politics.

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Memorial classifies Dmitriev as a "political prisoner";

he had researched Stalin's crimes in the region.

He discovered several locations of mass shootings, for example in the Sandarmoch forest, where the NKVD secret police shot thousands of Russians, Ukrainians, Poles and members of other nationalities in the "Great Terror" in 1937 and 1938.

"Chicane is a normal phenomenon"

The non-governmental organization Memorial International, which the regime has classified as a "foreign agent", is itself under great pressure. In the process of their ban, a judgment could be given in Moscow this Tuesday. In a written interview with “Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty” from custody, Dmitry commented on the repression against Memorial in December: “Harassment is a normal phenomenon. That means that Memorial is putting its finger in the wounds of the regime. ”When asked if he believed that this process would have existed if he had not worked for Memorial, the historian wrote:“ I think this case would never have existed . Who would be interested in a simple engineer? "

Dmitriev's sentence in a high-security colony has now been extended for the second time. He has been in custody for almost five years. Dmitriev was arrested in 2016 on charges of possession of child pornography. In court he testified that at the urging of social workers, he had taken nude photos of his adopted daughter to document her growth. In 2018 he was acquitted, but in July 2020 he was finally sentenced to three and a half years in prison; In September 2020, he was sentenced to 13 years in a prison camp, which was heavily criticized internationally.

The condemnation of Dmitryev had also led to tensions between Russia and Germany and France last year.

The governments in Berlin and Paris criticized the prison sentence at the time.

Your ambassadors were then summoned by the Russian Foreign Ministry.

The Ministry criticized an "act of interference in the internal affairs of the Russian Federation".

The Association of Veterans of Russia filed a complaint against Memorial leadership on Monday.

An open letter states that this denies fascist crimes.

Specifically, it is about the list of victims of political repression during the Soviet era, which the organization leads.

Following allegations that criminals were listed there, Memorial had deleted some entries;

the veterans' association is now suing 19 other "Nazi accomplices".