Postscript

Another Victim of Sandarmokh

- PAUL RICHARDSON

There are so many things wrong in the case of historian Yuri Dmitriev, it is hard to know where to start. His case should cause as much outrage in the West as did the poisoning of Alexei Navalny. Yet it has not, likely because the political prosecutors have successfully muddied the waters with bogus charges.

A respected and widely-honored historian of the Gulag and head of the Memorial Human Rights organization in Karelia, Dmitriev was in 2016 arrested and tried based on an anonymous tip (something that is illegal under Russian law), that alleged he had child pornography on his computer. The images turned out to be photographs of his then 11-year-old foster daughter, who was dangerously underweight and suffered from mysterious endocrinal issues. He asserts he took them to protect the family against an overzealous social services agency.