A complaint was filed with the ECHR against the arrest of the head of the Karelian “Memorial” Yuri Dmitriev

A complaint has been filed with the European Court of Human Rights against the arrest of the head of the Karelian branch of the Russian society "Memorial" Yuri Dmitriev. Kirill Koroteev and Tatyana Glushkova, lawyers from the Memorial Human Rights Center, represent his interests in the ECtHR, according to the HRC website.

Dmitriev is accused of taking photographs of his underage adopted daughter in order to produce pornographic materials. On December 15, 2016, he was arrested.

The complaint states that the arrest violates Article 5 of the Human Rights Convention, which guarantees the right to liberty and security of person. According to lawyer Tatyana Glushkova, when choosing a measure of restraint for Dmitriev, the courts did not motivate the assumption that he might abscond from the investigation and “did not even consider the possibility of placing him under house arrest, although if such a measure of restraint were chosen, he would not have been able to contact not with an adopted daughter, not with anyone else.

Dmitriev pleads not guilty. His relatives believe that someone else could have accessed his computer, where the files with the photographs that became the reason for the case were stored. Dmitriev claims that he photographed his adopted daughter to record the physical development of the girl, who was in poor health.

A large journalistic investigation by Alexander (Shura) Burtin about what Dmitriev was doing and how the criminal case arose was published on the website of the Les media project.