Russian Stalin Historian Charged With Sexual Assault

Russian authorities have formally indicted historian Yury Dmitriyev on a charge of sexual assault against his adopted daughter following an earlier acquittal on child-pornography charges.

The Investigative Committee said on July 3 that Dmitriyev was charged with "violent acts of a sexual nature committed against a person under 14 years of age."

Dmitriyev was rearrested on June 27, less than two weeks after a court in the northwestern region of Karelia overturned a verdict that cleared the 62-year-old of child-pornography charges and sent the case for retrial.

He spent 13 months in custody before he was acquitted in early April in a trial he dismisses as politically motivated.

Dmitriyev is the chief of the Moscow-based Memorial human right center's branch in Karelia and a historian who has worked for decades to expose crimes committed in the region by the Soviet state under dictator Josef Stalin. ...