Russian court jails gulag historian Yury Dmitriev for 13 years

A Russian court has abruptly handed Yury Dmitriev, a historian of Stalin-era crimes, a 13-year jail term after overturning an earlier sentence on charges that his supporters say were fabricated to punish him for his work.

Dmitriev, 64, was found guilty in July of sexually abusing his adopted daughter and sentenced to three and a half years in prison by the Petrozavodsk city court in Russia’s north-western Karelia region.

He had denied the charges, which his lawyer and supporters say were fabricated because of his work with rights group Memorial.

They say his real crime was dedicating himself to documenting Joseph Stalin’s 1937-38 Great Terror by unearthing mass graves and chronicling state repression. Nearly 700,000 people were executed during that period, according to conservative official estimates.

The July sentence would have resulted in Dmitriev being freed in November due to time served, but Karelia’s supreme court said on its website on Tuesday that he would now be held for 13 years in a high-security penal colony.

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Artem Cherkasov, one of Dmitriev’s lawyers, said his client would appeal against the decision, the Interfax news agency reported.

The US embassy in Moscow condemned the ruling.

“The Karelian supreme court’s decision to prolong historian Yury Dmitriev’s already unjust sentence by an outrageous 10 additional years is another step backwards for human rights and historical truths in Russia,” spokeswoman Rebecca Ross said on Twitter.

Fellow historians, rights activists and some leading cultural figures say Dmitriev was framed because his focus on Stalin’s crimes has become politically untenable in a modern Russia where the dominant state narrative is of a great nation rising from its knees.

The Kremlin has said it is not involved in his case. Asked whether it was politically-motivated, state prosecutors have said the case is based on real evidence.