Russian historian Yuri Dmitriev, known for his research on Stalinist repressions, is in serious health condition, according to Russian human rights activists. He was urgently transferred from the penal colony in the Republic of Mordovia to a prison hospital, reports Agerpres.
Yuri Dmitriev, 70 years old, reportedly suffered a stroke, according to the civil rights organization “Za Prava Celoveka” (“For Human Rights”). The Russian human rights organization Memorial, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, also conveyed the information.
A lawyer was denied access to Dmitriev, who had been sentenced to 15 years in a labor camp, indicated Za Prava. The lawyer was only told at the prison hospital in Barashevo that Dmitriev is alive.
Civil rights activists have demanded that he be transferred to a better equipped municipal hospital.
Russia holds numerous penal colonies in Mordovia (region near the Volga), 500 kilometers southeast of Moscow.
Why was Yuri Dmitriev sentenced
Historian Dmitriev discovered an execution site in the Karelia Republic, northern Russia, in 1997. Under Joseph Stalin’s Soviet dictatorship, the political police of the time, NKVD, executed approximately 10,000 people in the Sandarmoh forest area in 1937 and 1938.
Dmitriev has been in custody almost without interruption since 2016 and has been tried in several cases on the basis of allegations of alleged abuse of his adopted daughter.
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