This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in Russian. (December 2021)Click [show] for important translation instructions.
View a machine-translated version of the Russian article.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 2,754 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Russian Wikipedia article at [[:ru:Дмитриев, Юрий Алексеевич]]; see its history for attribution.
You should also add the template {{Translated|ru|Дмитриев, Юрий Алексеевич}} to the talk page.
Son Yegor, daughter Katerina (Klodt); adopted daughter Natasha
Yury Alexeyevich Dmitriev Юрий Алексеевич Дмитриев (born 28 January 1956, Petrozavodsk) is a local historian and activist in Karelia (Northwest Russia). Since the early 1990s, he has worked to locate the execution sites of Stalin's Great Terror in Karelia and, through work in the archives, to identify as many as possible of the buried victims they contain.[1][2] He has worked continually since the late 1980s to compile "Books of Remembrance" for Karelia, listing all the names of those executed there.
On 13 December 2016 Dmitriev was arrested and charged with making pornographic images of his foster daughter, Natasha, who was 11 at the time.[3][4] From the outset Dmitriev's colleagues declared the charges to be baseless and motivated by a determination to discredit the historian and his work. The closed trial attracted national and international attention and criticism.[5] On 26 December 2017, a second assessment by a court-appointed body of the photographs of his foster daughter concluded that they contained no element of pornography and had been taken, as the accused insisted, to monitor the health of a sickly child.[6]
On 5 April 2018, Dmitriev was acquitted of all but one minor offence. Within two months he was arrested and soon put on trial again. Given a short sentence at the end of his second trial in July 2020, the verdict was overruled by the High Court of Karelia and the charges returned for an unprecedented third judicial examination. Dmitriev and his lawyer Victor Anufriev battled through the courts in Petrozavodsk, St Petersburg and Moscow to have their appeal against the verdict and sentence heard. In October 2021 the case finally reached the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. But on December 27 his sentence was increased to 15 years.
Yury Dmitriev spent his first year in a Soviet orphanage. In 1957 he was adopted by a childless army officer and his wife; he found out he was not their child at the age of 14.[8] His father was posted to East Germany, and Yury spent part of his childhood in Dresden.[9]
He began but did not finish a course at the Northwest Health Department of the Leningrad Medical College.[10] During the Gorbachev years, Dmitriev was a member of the Karelian People's Front, and served between 1988 and 1991 as an aide to USSR People's Deputy Mikhail Zenko. It was then that he first encountered mass graves of those shot in the 1930s.[11]
Restoring the names
Dmitriev is known for his part in the discovery and investigation of two major burial sites, Sandarmokh and Krasny Bor, and their subsequent transformation into "informal" memorial complexes.
Yekaterina Klodt, Dmitriev's daughter by his first marriage, has described her father's determination to do as much as he possibly could to identify the victims buried in the anonymous and secret graves of the Stalin era. "I often asked him why he continually sat at the computer, writing or copying something out," she told Gleb Yarovoi. Dmitriev answered: "I do not know who I was in a past life, but I understand the meaning of my life now and I know that I must do this." As she grew older Yekaterina would frequently tell him to take a break—how much longer would he go on with these lists? "I can't stop," Dmitriev replied, "I must finish the book, people are waiting for it."[12] Dmitriev's life consisted, for year after year, of winters spent in the archives followed by summers scouring the forested areas around particular cities and towns with Witch (Vedma), his Alsatian, hunting for possible burial sites.[13]
At first Dmitriev was junior partner to Ivan Chukhin (ru: Чухин, Иван Иванович), a deputy of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet and State Duma (1990-1995),[14] and the first chairman of the Memorial Society in Karelia.[15] Chukhin felt compelled to engage in the work because his own father had been involved in acts of repression under Stalin.[12] When Chukhin, a retired police officer, was killed in a car accident in May 1997 Dmitriev carried on alone. On 1 July 1997, with members of St Petersburg Memorial, Dmitriev located a massive killing field, 12 kilometres from Medvezhyegorsk, that subsequently acquired the name of Sandarmokh; some weeks later, guided by local inhabitants, he confirmed the identification of the Krasny Bor execution site, 20km from Petrozavodsk.[16]
The thousands executed over 14 months from October 1937 to December 1938 fall into three broad groups. Many were from Karelia, a total of 2,344 free inhabitants of the republic. A smaller number (624) were forced "settlers" (i.e. peasants exiled to the North after the collectivisation of agriculture). A great many of those shot (1,988) were already prisoners of the Belbaltlag (White Sea Canal) camp system. A smaller group of 1,111 prisoners were brought there from the Solovki island prison. Together they made up almost half of those shot during the Great Terror in Karelia.
"Alongside hard-working peasants, fishermen and hunters from nearby villages," wrote Yury Dmitriev wrote:[15] "there were writers and poets, scientists and scholars, military leaders, doctors, teachers, engineers, clergy of all confessions and statesmen who found their final resting place here."
In 2003, in addition to his Books of Remembrance, Dmitriev also published a collection of documents about the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal and the fate of the numerous prisoners and "special settlers" engaged in its construction.[17]
Recognition at home and abroad
Yury A. Dmitriev, speaking at Sandarmokh, 5 August 2013
As a result of Dmitriev's activities, he was appointed secretary of the Petrozavodsk Commission for Restoring the Rights of Rehabilitated Victims of Political Repression and in 2002 became (and remains) a member of the organisation of the same name at the republican level, covering all of Karelia. He is a member of the Karelian branch of the Memorial Society, and in 2014 became its chairman.[18]
From 1998 to 2009, Dmitriev headed the Academy for the Defence of Socio-Legal Rights, a Karelian human rights NGO.[18] As president of that body, in 2002, Yury Dmitriev wrote to the then head of the Karelian republic, Sergey Katanandov, objecting to the proposal by the Karelia Council of Veterans to put up a statue in Petrozavodsk to Yury Andropov. (KGB chairman from 1967 to 1982, Andropov headed the Komsomol in Karelia during the Great Patriotic War, from 1940 to 1944.) Katanandov did not reply to Dmitriev's letter and the 10-foot-high memorial to Andropov was erected. The decision, commented Dmitriev, reflected the nation's attitude to its recent history: "We don't know the past, and we don't want to know."[19]
In 2005, Dmitriev was awarded the new "Golden Pen of Russia" prize for his publications.[20]
In November 2016, a month before his arrest, Dmitriev was awarded Karelia's highest prize, the Honorary Diploma of the Karelian Republic, by the head of Karelia Alexander Hudilainen (Худилайнен, Александр Петрович, 2012-2017).[22]
On 31 December 2017, Yury Dmitriev was one of 16 journalists, bloggers, writers and historians, imprisoned or otherwise persecuted by the authorities, who were recognised at the annual Sakharov awards in Moscow for "Journalism as an Act of Conscience".[23]
Criminal prosecution
In late 2016, Dmitriev was arrested on charges of child pornography. In 2018, he was acquitted of those charges. Later in 2018, he was arrested again for charges of sexual assault. In 2020, he was found guilty of those charges and sentenced to 3 and a half years in prison.[24] This sentence was later increased to 13 years.[25]
His defense team consider the charges to be fabricated, a misinterpretation of what little evidence the investigators have found. There is also concern about the prospects for a fair trial. On 10 January 2017 a 13-minute segment of the news programme entitled "What does Memorial have to hide?" on a national TV network Rossiya-24 showed the allegedly pornographic photographs Dmitriev had taken of his foster daughter Natasha.[26] The defence team believes they were leaked to the media by the investigators, although as evidence in a forthcoming trial they were sub judice.[27]
The explanation offered by Dmitriev for the existence of the 140 photographs, 9 of which are claimed by the prosecution to be pornographic, is that they record the improving health of a neglected and under-nourished little girl from a children's home, whom he and his second wife had taken into their care. He stopped keeping this photographic record in 2015.[28]
It was subsequently revealed by the defence that there were only three such photographs: copies of two photos boosted the total to nine.[29]
When charges were brought against the imprisoned Dmitriev in early 2017 it became clear that he had many supporters.[30] By early July, an Internet petition in his defense had drawn over 30,000 signatures in Russia and elsewhere.[31]
First trial (2017-2018)
After months in police custody, Dmitriev's trial began on 1 June 2017.[32] As with other trials in Russia concerning sexual offences against minors, neither press nor public were admitted to the hearings at the Petrozavodsk City Court.[33]
On 11 July, four expert witnesses testified on behalf of the defence, casting serious doubts on the interpretation of the evidence by the prosecution and its experts. Dmitriev's attorney Victor Anufriev announced that the hearings had ended for the time being and would resume on 1 August. He expressed the hope that his client could address the court on 22 August and that a verdict would be delivered by 1 September 2017.[34]
Thanks to the persistence of the defence, however, the trial continued. On 15 September 2017, the court agreed to submit the photographic evidence to other experts, after the defence had petitioned four times for such a decision.
New assessment of photographs
The alternative organisations proposed for this task, first by the prosecution and then by the judge, proved to be obscure private firms without the legal right to act as forensic experts.[29]
The hearing scheduled for 18 October was postponed because the new experts were not ready to present their fresh assessment of the same 9 pornographic photographs. A hearing was held on 25 October but the assessment of the photographs was still not ready.[35] On 26 December 2017, the new court-appointed body finally presented the findings of its experts that there was no element of pornography in the photographs taken by Dmitriev and concluded that their purpose was to monitor the health of a sickly child.[6]
Second psychiatric assessment
That same day the Petrozavodsk City Court ruled that Yury Dmitriev should undergo a second psychiatric assessment at the Serbsky Center in Moscow, and that a third assessment of the nine photographs be made by the same body. This decision caused some concern. Dmitriev had already been subject to psychiatric assessment in Petrozavodsk and there had been signs of a revival at the Serbsky Center of its well-documented Soviet-era use as an instrument of political punishment.[36]
On 27 December 2017, the court changed the measure of restraint imposed on Dmitriev. After more than a year in custody at the city's Detention Centre No 1, he would be released on 28 January 2018 (his 62nd birthday), on condition that he did not leave the country.[37] On 28 December, without notifying his defence attorney, the court had Dmitriev flown under escort to Moscow where he was taken to the Serbsky Center to begin assessment.[38] On 30 December, Dmitriev's son delivered food for his father to the Serbsky Center.[39]
Release and resumption of trial
On 27 January, Dmitriev was released from custody and allowed to return to his home, on condition that he did not leave the city of Petrozavodsk.[40][41] On 20 March, the city prosecutor Askerova reaffirmed the accusations against him and demanded 9 years of prison in a severe regime colony. The next court hearing is scheduled for 22 March 2018.
Acquittal and appeal
On 5 April 2018, Dmitriev was acquitted of the child pornography charges by Judge Marina Nosova at the conclusion of his trial at the Petrozavodsk City Court. She found him guilty of possessing parts of a shotgun and sentenced him to three months probation plus community service. Dmitriev had denied all the charges.[42]
Novaya Gazeta newspaper commented: "The decision was unprecedented for Russian justice where the percentage of acquittals does not exceed the statistical margin of error."[43] In trials without a jury, the percentage of acquittals in the Russian judicial system is now markedly less than 1% of the total.[44] The result in the Dmitriev Case, therefore, was an achievement against the odds. (In trials where the case is heard before a jury, the proportion of acquittals was higher, around 20% of the total in 2009.)[45]
On 13 April 2018, the Petrozavodsk city prosecutor, Yelena Askerova, submitted a formal appeal to the court against the acquittal of Yury Dmitriev on all but one charge. This appeal was accepted by the Supreme Court of Karelia and a hearing was set for Thursday, 14 June. Dmitriev's defence attorney, Victor Anufriev, submitted an appeal against his client's conviction for possessing parts of a firearm.[46] On 14 June 2018, the acquittal was overturned by the Supreme Court of Karelia.[47]
Reaction to trial
Journalist Maria Eismont wrote that the trial of Yury Dmitriev in Petrozavodsk was "the most important thing happening in Russia right now".[48]
"This trial has helped us recognise a remarkable man. It is a barbaric way of discovering good people, but in Russian society it has proved very effective. In this sense, the trial has done something worthwhile."
By early December 2017, over seventy video clips of famous Russians speaking in Dmitriev's defence—writers, musicians, priests, historians, film-makers, actors—had been posted on a variety of social media and reposted to his supporters' Facebook page and to the Dmitriev Affair website.[50] Among them were TV presenter and literary critic Alexander Arkhangelsky,[51] Natalya Solzhenitsyn,[52] film director Andrey Zvyagintsev, and the sculptor-designer of the Wall of Sorrow monument, Georgy Frangulyan, who commented: "What has happened [to Dmitriev] is appalling, it's tragic".[53]
Second Trial (2018-2020)
New arrest, a new charge
On 28 June 2018, Yury Dmitriev was arrested again, apparently for breaking the terms of his release in April: he was stopped by police, travelling out of the city of Petrozavodsk to attend the funeral of a friend. The NTV national TV channel published footage of Dmitriev at the police station and claimed that he had been attempting to flee the country.[54] To the former charge of child pornography was now added that of "sexual acts of a forcible nature" (Article 132, part 4).[55][56]
On 20 September 2018, the Supreme Court of Karelia turned down an appeal from Dmitriev's lawyer Victor Anufriev to change the measure of restraint on his client from custody at Detention Centre No 1 to home arrest. The first hearing of the new trial was scheduled to take place on that day, but was postponed until 27 September because the accused and his lawyer had not yet finished re-reading the case materials for the old charges.[57] On 27 September the hearing was again postponed for the same reason, until 17 October.[58]
Verdict, sentence overruled
On 22 July 2020, Dmitriev was acquitted of producing pornography and the illegal possession of weapons, but found guilty of sexual assault against his adopted daughter. After the trial ended the basis for this charge was finally made public – Dmitiriev had touched his daughter's underwear to see whether it had been wetted with urine.[59] Judge Merkov sentenced him to three years and six months of imprisonment, little more than a quarter of the sentence recommended in the Criminal Code for such an offence. The relatively mild sentence may have been partly due to the testimony of a linguist who participated in an analysis of the questioning of Natasha.[60]
If the appeal against this sentence by the prosecution had not been upheld, Dmitriev would have been freed in mid-November 2020. Since his first arrest in December 2016, he had already served most of this term of imprisonment, under investigation or awaiting and during his two trials, in detention centre No 1 in Petrozavodsk.[61] At the end of the trial in July 2020, the prosecution asked for him to serve a 15-year sentence in a strict regime penal colony.
The defence has appealed against the conviction, demanding that Yury Dmitriev be cleared of all charges; an appeal was also lodged on behalf of Natasha.[62] The prosecution prevailed. At an appeals hearing in September 2020 the High Court of Karelia increased the sentence fourhold for offences under Article 132 to 13 years in a strict-regime penal colony and sent the other charges back for a further "unprecedented" examination at the Petrozavodsk City Court.
Appeals (2020-2021)
Appeals to Petersburg, Moscow and Strasbourg
Victor Anufriev, Dmitriev's defence attorney since December 2016, pressed for the High Court's ruling to be considered by the Third Cassation Court of Appeal in St Petersburg. This was granted after a struggle. On 16 February 2021 the court in Petersburg left the sentence unchanged. Dmitriev then appealed to the Supreme Court in Moscow. Meanwhile lawyers at Memorial submitted an appeal on his behalf to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
After delay and resistance, the Supreme Court agreed to accept Dmitriev's appeal detailing procedural violations and opposing the drastic increase in the sentence. In October 2021 Judge Sergei Abramov of the Supreme Court turned down the request to examine the appeal before the Court. Dmitriev lawyer Anufriev challenged this decision as an inadequate response to the 25 hefty case files of evidence, accumulated since June 2017, which had twice led to his client's effective acquittal.
The Third Trial and verdict
The Third Trial resumed behind closed doors without any statement by the RF Supreme Court. The case files had been returned, presumably, from Moscow to Petrozavodsk.
The prosecution and the defence gave their closing statements in mid-December and on 14 December it was announced that the verdict in the third trial would not be made public until 11 am on 27 December 2021,[63] the day before the next hearing of the case against the Memorial (society) at the Supreme Court.
In jurisprudence, double jeopardy is a procedural defence that prevents an accused person from being tried again on the same charges following an acquittal or conviction and in rare cases prosecutorial and/or judge misconduct in the same jurisdiction. Double jeopardy is a common concept in criminal law. In civil law, a similar concept is that of res judicata. Variation in common law countries is the peremptory plea, which may take the specific forms of autrefois acquit or autrefois convict. These doctrines appear to have originated in ancient Roman law, in the broader principle non bis in idem.
A plea bargain is an agreement in criminal law proceedings, whereby the prosecutor provides a concession to the defendant in exchange for a plea of guilt or nolo contendere. This may mean that the defendant will plead guilty to a less serious charge, or to one of the several charges, in return for the dismissal of other charges; or it may mean that the defendant will plead guilty to the original criminal charge in return for a more lenient sentence.
The Republic of Karelia, also known as just Karelia, is a republic of Russia situated in Northwest Russia. The republic is a part of the Northwestern Federal District, and covers an area of 172,400 square kilometres, with a population of 533,121 residents. Its capital is Petrozavodsk.
In common law jurisdictions, an acquittal certifies that the accused is free from the charge of an offense, as far as criminal law is concerned. The finality of an acquittal is dependent on the jurisdiction. In some countries, such as the United States, an acquittal prohibits the retrial of the accused for the same offense, even if new evidence surfaces that further implicates the accused. The effect of an acquittal on criminal proceedings is the same whether it results from a jury verdict or results from the operation of some other rule that discharges the accused. In other countries, the prosecuting authority may appeal an acquittal similar to how a defendant may appeal a conviction.
The Solovki special camp, was set up in 1923 on the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea as a remote and inaccessible place of detention, primarily intended for socialist opponents of Soviet Russia's new Bolshevik regime. The first book on the Gulag, namely, In the Claws of the GPU (1934) by Francišak Aljachnovič, described the Solovki prison camp.
Alexander Konstantinovich Nikitin is a Russian former submarine officer and nuclear safety inspector turned environmentalist. In 1996 he was accused of espionage for revealing the perils of decaying nuclear submarines, and in 2000 he became the first Russian to be completely acquitted of a charge of treason in the Soviet or post-Soviet era.
Section 11 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is the section of the Canadian Constitution that protects a person's legal rights in criminal and penal matters. There are nine enumerated rights protected in section 11.
Krasny Bor is a wooded area, not far from Petrozavodsk, the capital of Karelia, in northwestern Russia. As with Krasnaya ploshchad in Moscow – today known in English as Red Square but with a name originating, from earlier Russian usage, as the "Handsome" or "Beautiful" Square – Krasny Bor means the "Beautiful Grove".
Yury Titovich Shutov was a Russian politician who is known for collecting incriminating evidence against Saint Petersburg administration, including former Mayor Anatoly Sobchak and his aide at this time Vladimir Putin. Shutov was convicted to life in prison on criminal charges that have been allegedly fabricated to punish him for making public accusations of Putin.
Hryhorii Danylovych Epik was a Ukrainian writer and journalist. He supported the Soviet Ukrainization during the 1920s, which likely led to his arrest and execution during the Great Purge in the 1930s.
The Anwar Ibrahim sodomy trials are a source of considerable political controversy in Malaysia. The first trial was held in 1998, and resulted in former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim being convicted, and given a nine-year prison sentence. This verdict was overturned in 2004, resulting in Anwar's release from prison.
Sandarmokh is a forest massif 12 km (7.5 mi) from Medvezhyegorsk in the Republic of Karelia where possibly thousands of victims of Stalin's Great Terror were executed. More than 58 nationalities were shot and buried there by the NKVD in 236 communal pits over a 14-month period in 1937 and 1938.
Lyudmila Fyodorovna Markianova is a Karelian linguist and a professor emerita. She has been called "karjalan kielen muamo", i.e. 'mother of the Karelian language'.
The Trial of the Four, also Galanskov–Ginzburg trial, was the 1968 trial of Yuri Galanskov, Alexander Ginzburg, Alexey Dobrovolsky and Vera Lahkova for their involvement in samizdat publications. The trial took place in Moscow City Court on January 8–12. All four defendants were sentenced to terms in labour camps. The trial played a major part in consolidating the emerging human rights movement in the Soviet Union.
Mikhail Rodionovich Matveyev was a senior NKVD executioner, sent to begin the mass shootings at Sandarmokh in Karelia in the late 1930s.
The 2017 Republic of Karelia head election took place on 10 September 2017, on common election day. Acting Head Artur Parfenchikov was elected for his first full term. It was the first direct Karelia head election in 15 years since Sergey Katanandov won his second term in April 2002.
Oyub Salmanovich Titiev is a Russian human rights activist and the head of Memorial's Grozny, Chechnya office. In 2018 he was arrested on politically motivated charges, sparking an international campaign by human rights groups calling for his release. On October 8, 2018, Titiev was awarded the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize, which honours "outstanding" defence of human rights in Europe and beyond.
Eugene Singarajah Thuraisingam is a lawyer from Singapore. He is the founder of the law firm Eugene Thuraisingam LLP, a law firm that specialises in international arbitration and criminal and commercial litigation. He is also known for his advocacy of human rights and for his opposition of the death penalty in Singapore. In relation to his domestic practice as a criminal lawyer in Singapore, Thuraisingam has defended many alleged suspects in high profile criminal trials, including those who were dissidents and critics of the government of Singapore. For his legal service for many defendants in the court of Singapore, Doyles Guide has named him as a leading criminal defence lawyer in Singapore in 2020.
Gennady Nikolayevich Kupriyanov was a Soviet politician who served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic from 1940 to 1950.
Gobi a/l Avedian is a Malaysian drug convict who is currently serving a 15-year term of imprisonment in Singapore for attempted importation of a Class C drug. Gobi was at first, charged in 2014 with the capital charge of trafficking over 40.22g of heroin, which attracts the death penalty in Singapore. In his defence, Gobi stated that he was unaware he was carrying heroin and thought he was carrying "chocolate drugs" as what his two friends told him when he received an offer to deliver the drugs for money to pay his daughter's surgery fees.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
Russia 
