On March 20, the prosecutor's office requested that a historian, the head of the Karelian branch of the Memorial Society Yuri Dmitriev, be sentenced to nine years in a strict regime colony in the case of alleged pornographic pictures of his adopted daughter, as reported by "7x7" journalist from the courtroom.
Prosecutor Elena Askerova had been speaking for an hour and a half and requested that Dmitriev be found guilty on all charges.
"Never mind. I think we'll break through”, said Dmitriev after the hearing.
“The prosecutor's requisitory speech made me feel that this year we've spent in vain in court”, commented a legal representative Viktor Anufriev. “The arguments of defence, experts, conclusions of the last two expertises were not heard. Therefore, the prosecutor actually read out the indictment: everything that Dmitriev was charged of was correct, lawful and justified, as he did it all. The repressive machine moves on its own, it has its own schedule of movement”.
The head of the Karelian branch of the Memorial Society Yuri Dmitriev was detained on December 13, 2016. For more than a year he was kept in jail charged of producing pornography. According to investigators, Dmitriev photographed his adopted daughter naked. The defence of the historian claims that the pictures were taken for the girl's health diary, which Dmitriev kept for the guardianship authorities because the daughter was too thin. The same point of view is shared by the experts.
The court appointed two photographs expertises from Dmitriev's case. The second expertise showed that there were no signs of pornography. On January 22, the Serbsky Institute completed the psychiatric examination of Dmitriev, specially for that he was transferred to Moscow. On February 27, the court announced the results of the examination, and Yuri Dmitriev was proved healthy.
The trial in Petrozavodsk started on June 1, 2017. The case is heard in camera, so no visitors or journalists can attend the meeting. In addition to producing pornographic materials involving minors, Dmitriev is accused of committing crimes under articles 135 of the Russian Criminal Code ("Committing non-violent acts of violence") and 222 ("Illegal possession of firearms").
On January 27, 2018 Yury Dmitriev left the remand centre by court order, now the historian is in community detention. In his first interview after the release, Dmitriev described his life in cell and plans to finish the book.
