The rights group ZPCh reported the hospitalization of the 70-year-old historian. A source cited by the group said the prison medical facility in Barashevo may lack the diagnostic and treatment equipment needed for the required procedures.
"Yuri Alekseyevich must be transferred to a city hospital. It is also necessary to urgently allow a lawyer to see him," the rights defenders' source said. According to the source, a lawyer will try to reach Dmitriyev on September 26, but is unlikely to be admitted over the weekend.
Dmitriyev is one of the founders of the Sandarmokh memorial complex in Karelia and a former head of the Karelian branch of Memorial. In 1997 he discovered mass graves of repressed Soviet citizens in the Sandarmokh forest tract and compiled remembrance lists of repressed residents of Karelia.
The historian has been in custody since 2016, when he was accused of producing pornography involving his underage adopted daughter, committing lewd acts and illegally storing part of a firearm. The basis for the case was photographs of his daughter found in Dmitriyev's possession. He denied the charges and said he took the pictures solely for medical purposes, to track the child's development.
In April 2018 a court acquitted Dmitriyev on two charges, sentencing him to 3.5 years of restricted freedom under the weapons storage article. The Supreme Court of Karelia overturned that verdict, and a new case was opened against the historian on charges of violent acts of a sexual nature. In 2020 he was sentenced to 13 years in a strict-regime colony in that case. In December 2021 a court in Petrozavodsk, by combining the sentences, imposed 15 years of imprisonment on Dmitriyev.
In the colony Dmitriyev was repeatedly sent to a punishment cell for "poor performance of exercises during morning physical training." His health problems worsened in custody.
Collective letters in support of Yuri Dmitriyev were signed by more than 150 Russian cultural figures and more than 400 foreign scholars. Among them are Nobel laureates in literature Herta Müller and Svetlana Alexievich, as well as Goncourt Prize winner Jonathan Littell. Memorial considers Dmitriyev a political prisoner.