European’s top rights court on Tuesday condemned Russia for violating Gulag historian Yury Dmitriyev’s rights to a fair trial within a reasonable time. Still, it stopped short of ruling his jailing was politically motivated.
Dmitriyev, 70, is known for his work locating the mass graves of people killed under Joseph Stalin’s rule, including in the notorious Gulag network of forced labour camps.
A Russian court in July 2020 sentenced the historian to more than three years in jail, on a controversial child sex abuse charge his supporters say was punishment for his life’s work.
After a lengthy appeals process, the court in 2021 transformed that sentence into 15 years in a penal colony.
He was initially arrested in 2016 and charged with child pornography over several nude photos of his adopted daughter that he said he took to monitor her growth.
A court acquitted him in 2018, but the supreme court in the northwestern region of Karelia quashed that judgement.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) found there had been a breach of the historian’s right to reasonably short pre-trial detention, as well as his right to a “legal assistance of his own choosing” during his trial.
It however rejected allegations that his prosecution was politically motivated.
It ordered Russia to pay the applicant 2,000 euros (more than $2,200).
Moscow quit the Council of Europe — of which the ECHR is part — following its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The court says Russia remains liable for violations committed before then.
Moscow has repeatedly ignored ECHR rulings, including while it was still a member of the Council of Europe.
Dmitriyev was head of the Karelia branch of the Memorial Human Rights Centre that was dissolved and jointly received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022.
AFP
