Historian Yuri Dmitriev, imprisoned in Russia, was sent to solitary confinement for his “incorrect execution” of morning physical sports exercises, according to the Russian human rights NGO Memorial.
Although in fragile health, Yuri Dmitriev was placed on Friday “in a punitive isolation cell for six days,” this organization said Tuesday evening. “The official reason for this punishment is “incorrect execution of morning exercises,” she said.
Imprisoned since 2016, Yuri Dmitriev will be 69 years old next week, “including eight spent in prison”. And he has not benefited from medical examinations during all this time in detention, Memorial denounced. However, his state of health is “deteriorating,” she added.
The historian is a figure of Memorial, an organization guarding the memory of victims of the gulags which became a target of repression under Vladimir Putin. The NGO, co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, was banned in Russia at the end of 2021.
Yuri Dmitriev was arrested in 2016 then convicted in 2020-2021 for sexual violence against his minor adopted daughter. The prosecution accused him of having taken naked photos of the little girl, when he assured him that he had taken them to follow the growth of a child, because she was malnourished at the time of her adoption.
-Memorial, the historian and his many supporters denounced a frame-up intended to punish him for his research on Soviet terror. His initial sentence of 13 years in prison was increased to 15 years in 2021.
Before his incarceration, Yuri Dmitriev headed a Memorial branch in Karelia, a region in northern Russia. He spent decades locating mass graves and exhuming the remains of victims of Stalinist repression.
Under Vladimir Putin, a former officer of the KGB, the organization heir to the political police of Lenin and Stalin, access to state archives on these subjects was considerably reduced and the identities of those carrying out the purges classified secret.
Memorial founder Oleg Orlov was also imprisoned, but was released in August as part of a prisoner exchange between Russia and the West.
