Press Release, 16.09.2019

The Tverskoy District Court of Moscow will consider the lawsuit of Yabloko Chair Emilia Slabunova against the Public Prosecutor General and the Prosecutor General’s Office of Karelia for their refusal to examine on merit the excavations of the graves of the victims of Stalin’s reprisals by the Russian Military Historical Society in Sandarmokh.

The first hearing of the case will take place on 19 September at 15.30.

Address: Kalanchevskaya 43A, hall 655 (the new building).

Media can get accreditation through the court’s press centre.

It should be noted that Slabunova have appealed three times to the supervisory authorities with a request to verify the lawfulness of the excavations since August 2018, but still did not receive a substantive answer.

At the end of the summer of 2018, the Russian Military Historical Society carried out work in the territory of the burial place for victims of political reprisals during Stalin’s Great Terror period. The burial place is the largest in the north-west of Russia. The Society announced that it was searching for soldiers of the Red Army shot by “Finnish invaders” which, according to the Society, should prove that there had been no mass burials of Stalin’s victims. The legitimacy of the work raised many questions from journalists, human rights activists and historians.

In August this year, the Society conducted its second expedition to Sandarmokh. Emilia Slabunova appealed to the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow with a request to stop the second expedition of the Russian Military Historical Society to Sandarmokh before the court decides on her suit, but her appeal was declined.