Supporters of Karelian historian Yury Dmitriev, who is accused of making pornography and sexual abuse, held a series of one-person pickets in support of him in Petrozavodsk in the morning of July 8. The police detained Victoria Ivleva, a journalist who was holding a picket, she reported on her Facebook page.
Yuri Dmitriev is going to make his final statement in the Petrozavodsk City Court on July 8. The defense asked to acquit him, the government demands 15 years in high security for the defendant. In 2018, the local history expert was declared not guilty in the criminal case on making child pornography initiated because of the photos of his adopted daughter being naked. Dmitriev himself explained that he had taken those photos for a health journal.
The acquittal was later overturned, and the investigation resumed. The local history expert was additionally charged with sexual abuse. The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the European External Action Service, the European Union, and the OSCE have spoken in support of Dmitriev; more than 150 scientists, cultural figures, politicians, and journalists from Russia and more than 400 — from Europe and the United States have signed an open letter for his release from detention facility.
Yury Dmitriev discovered mass graves of political repressions’ victims in Sandarmokh and Krasny Bor in the late 1990s.
