Russia’s Supreme Court ordered rights group Memorial International shut down on Tuesday, Deutsche Welle reports. The shutdown order comes one day after Gulag historian and Memorial International leader Yury Dmitriev’s prison sentence for bullshit charges of sexually abusing his own adopted daughter was extended another two years on top of the 13 he was already in for. Prosecutors had charged that Memorial was receiving funding from sources outside Russia, and by not clearly marking their literature as issued by a “foreign agent”, the NGO was subject to closure.
But the Putin regime’s real issue with the group was made plain in prosecutor Alexei Zhafyarov’s arguments to the bench. “It is obvious that Memorial creates a false image of the USSR as a terrorist state by speculating on the topic of political repression of the 20th century,” Zhafyarov said. Dozens protested outside the court as the verdict was rendered, shouting “SHAME! SHAME!” over the court’s ruling. Several protestors were carried away by cops to jail cells unknown.