Yury Dmitriyev is brought before court in Petrozavdosk, March 2017. Image still via YouTube / Semnasem. Some rights reserved.Yuri Dmitriyev, a Russian researcher of Stalin-era repressions and head of the Karelian branch of Memorial, spent 13 months in pre-trial detention in 2016-2018. In a case that has attracted solidarity and support in Russia, Dmitriyev was arrested in December 2016 and charged with producing child pornography, the supposed evidence for which consisted of photographs of his adopted daughter. As part of the police investigation, two experts were called upon to evaluate the photos: one of them considered them pornographic; the other not.
The case is still running, but a court has now ruled that there was no need for Dmitriyev to remain in detention and on 27 January he was released from custody on condition that he not leave the country. Dmitriyev returned home on the eve of his 62nd birthday. On 27 February, Petrozavodsk’s city court confirmed that a medical assessment carried out at Moscow’s Serbsky Institute has found Dmitriyev suffers from no psychiatric or sexual abnormalities, and that the “incriminating” photographs on Dmitriyev's computer were not pornographic.
The support group is out in force
“There’s no more space, you’ll have to take your coats with you,” says the cloakroom assistant in a slightly annoyed tone. The cloakroom at Petrozavodsk city court was obviously not designed to cater for the number of people who have turned up to observe the latest session in the Yuri Dmitriyev case. The ushers are noticeably nervy, because 15 minutes before the court session is due to begin, an indecently long queue has formed in front of the security gate – it’s blocking the main door. When people ask rhetorical questions about why the cloakroom couldn’t be enlarged to cater for the increased number of cases being heard, the staff answer wearily that this is the judicial department’s responsibility, and nothing to do with them.
