Karelian historian Yury Dmitriev will be under a psychiatric examination in St. Petersburg for a month

The new psychiatric examination of Yury Dmitriev, the Karelian researcher who studied Stalin's repressions, will take a little less than a month. A new criminal charge has been brought against him based on “sexual abuse in respect of minors”, as said to “7x7” by the attorney Viktor Anufriev.

“The institution is rather old, its reputation is ambiguous, as well as the reputation of previous similar institutions. Now there is a new chief doctor, she was a deputy chief doctor before. The information about the place is ambiguous, that's why I want to go there tomorrow”, said Anufriev. “It is important for me that the doctors have the results of the examinations that were held before during the first case (by the Federal Independent Expertise Center and the Serbsky Center). Since I do not see any grounds for conducting a new examination. The most authoritative Centre for Psychiatry and Drug Abuse Treatment, the Serbsky one, has already answered all that questions, there is no other more credible than that”.

The attorney believes that the investigation will not be dragged out because it is necessary to refer the case to the court as soon as possible – the acquittal undermined the credibility of the prosecutor's office (although it was subsequently overturned) in the first case.

Yury Dmitriev is a researcher of Stalin's repressions in Karelia, the head of the Karelian branch of “Memorial”. He was among the regional ethnographers who discovered places of mass graves in Sandarmokh. He was detained in his apartment on December 13, 2016. The reason was a denunciation: allegedly the historian had pornographic pictures of his foster-daughter on the computer. Two days later Dmitriev was placed in jail for two months, after which the term of arrest was extended many times. ThePetrozavodsk city court acquitted the historian in the case of pornography on April 5, 2018. The Karelian Supreme Court overturned the conviction on June 14.

On June 27, 2018 he was detained again, and on June 28 it became known that the Investigative Committee had instituted a new criminal case under the article “Sexual violence against a minor”. On July 15, Dmitriev was transferred to St. Petersburg for another (already the third one after the arrest) psychiatric examination.

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