Yuri Dmitriev was transferred from a Mordovian penal colony to a medical facility with suspected stroke

According to ZPCh, on September 25 Yuri Dmitriev was urgently transferred from IK-18 in Mordovia to a medical correctional facility in the settlement of Barashevo.

The historian is suspected of having a stroke, and the project’s source doubts that this facility has the necessary equipment for diagnosis and treatment.

According to him, Dmitriev needs to be transferred to a city hospital and his lawyer should be urgently allowed to see him. The lawyer was planning to arrive on September 26, but feared he would not be let in on the day off.

Yuri Dmitriev is a historian, former head of Karelia’s Memorial, and one of the founders of the Sandarmokh memorial complex in Karelia. In 2020, he was sentenced to 13 years in a high-security penal colony on charges of violent sexual acts against his adopted daughter, and in 2021 the term was increased to 15 years.

Dmitriev’s associates believe he is being persecuted for years of work to restore the memory of the victims of repression. Memorial considers Dmitriev a political prisoner, and in the colony he was repeatedly sent to a punishment cell for “poor performance of exercises during morning calisthenics”. According to the same sources, the historian’s health problems worsened in prison.

Sources

• Novaya Gazeta Europe