Lawyer Igor Perov, who represented Yury Dmitriev's adopted daughter and her grandmother before the court, considers the increase from 3.5 to 13 years in prison for the local history expert to be restoration of social justice. He stated this to 7x7 on September 30.
Igor Perov told the correspondent of 7x7 that he considered the sentence just and was not going to appeal against it:
— The terms "satisfied" or "not satisfied" cannot be used in this situation. I believe that the sentence after the appeal has restored social justice.
At the same time, as Interfax reports with reference to human rights defender Oleg Orlov, the lawyers of the Memorial Human Rights Center are going to appeal against the Karelian local history expert's sentence to the European Court of Human Rights. The application, according to Orlov, was filed with Dmitriev's consent.
Memorial’s employees believe that Dmitriev's right of defence was violated, since government attorney Artyom Cherkasov was assigned to his appeal, instead of waiting for Viktor Anufriev, who had been holding the brief from the very beginning of the criminal proceedings, to recover. Orlov called the sentence "revenge of the heiress of the Soviet system."
Yury Dmitriev's sentence was toughened during the appeal hearing in the Supreme Court of Karelia the day before. The court increased the sentence almost four times: from 3.5 to 13 years in prison. The articles on which the Petrozavodsk City Court acquitted him on July 22 were remitted.
Karelian local history expert Yury Dmitriev was found guilty under Article 132 of the Criminal Code (Violent Actions of Sexual Character) against his minor daughter. The local history expert was charged with an episode when he had touched underwear of the girl suffering from irretention near the genitals. Dmitriev and his defense argued that this was how he checked whether her underwear was dry, but the Petrozavodsk City Court sentenced him to 3.5 years in prison and acquitted him of charges on child pornography and possession of weapons. Taking into account the time spent in pre-trial detention facilities, Dmitriev was supposed to be released in November 2020.
Relatives and supporters of Dmitriev were sure then that the court had not found any sufficient evidence of guilt, so the sentence was much lighter than the one specified in the Criminal Code.
Yury Dmitriev is known as the Chairman of the Karelian branch of Memorial and a researcher of mass repressions on the territory of the republic.
