MOSCOW, January 24. /TASS/. Moscow’s concerns about the health of Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who serves a 20-year prison term in the United States, were not ungrounded, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told the Rossiya-24 TV channel on Sunday.
The diplomat expressed hope that the US authorities will further provide all the necessary assistance to Yaroshenko, who was given surgery on Thursday in a hospital of the city of Trenton, New Jersey, where his jail is located.
"We have focused the attention of our American colleagues on the situation around Yaroshenko. We explained that he complaints about his health and he needs to be provided with medical assistance. Our colleagues said according to the data they have nothing serious happens with his health," Zakharova said.
"Now we see that he underwent a surgery in a facility. We were right when saying that his health needed medical intervention," she said. "We strongly hope that the American side will continue treating the complaints of the Russian citizen carefully and providing him with all the necessary assistance."
Yaroshenko’s lawyer Alexey Tarasov earlier told TASS his client had undergone surgery without any proper preparation. He was denied the right to have rehabilitation and to receive needed medicines as he could not walk and suffered from pain.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry Envoy for Human Rights, Democracy and Supremacy of Law Konstantin Dolgov has earlier called the US attention to Yaroshenko’s health. He said the Russian national had serious diseases caused by unsatisfactory conditions in jail and the failure to receive medical assistance for a long time.
Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko was sentenced to twenty years in prison on September 7, 2011 in the United States, where he was transferred from Liberia. Yaroshenko was abducted on May 28, 2010 from the parking space of Royal Hotel in the city of Monrovia in the West African country of Liberia under the pretext of his detention for alleged trade in cocaine for its subsequent illegal delivery to the United States.
Yaroshenko was subsequently transferred illegally by officers of the Drug Enforcement Administration of the US Department of Justice to New York aboard a plane without compliance with any required legal procedures set both by international norms and the legislation of Liberia regulating the extradition and deportation of a foreign citizen, and also without the obligatory notice of Russia’s diplomatic mission.
The Russian pilot was taken to a local US prison, after which he was put on trial and sentenced to a lengthy term.