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Lawyer: Russian pilot Yaroshenko starts receiving medical assistance in US jail

"A contact has been established between the jail’s administration and Russian diplomats" on Yaroshenko’s health, the lawyer said

NEW YORK, January 28. /TASS/. Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who serves a 20-year prison term in the United States, has started receiving basic medical assistance after undergoing surgery last week without any proper preparation, his lawyer Alexei Tarasov has told TASS.

"A contact has been established between the jail’s administration and Russian diplomats" on Yaroshenko’s health, the lawyer said. "The assistance has started being provided to Konstantin, at least a basic one," he said.

The Russian still fails to get access to all the medications he needs, Tarasov said. He also confirmed that the representatives of Russia’s Consulate General in New York will visit Yaroshenko soon.

Last week, Yaroshenko, 47, underwent surgery in a hospital of the city of Trenton, New Jersey, where his jail is located. "He was not informed beforehand and neither any preparations were made nor any analyses were taken," Tarasov said.

Yaroshenko was locked up in a disciplinary cell from which he was driven to the hospital. "A 45-minute-long proctologic operation was done under general anesthesia," Tarasov said, noting that the Russian pilot was allowed to stay 20 minutes at the hospital after he recovered from anesthesia and then was immediately returned to his cell.

Yaroshenko was not admitted to the medical unit at the prison nor given any medicines prescribed by doctors. "At night he suffered from terrible pain, as he said, from a pain shock," Tarasov said adding the inmates told the guards about his condition but eventually no medical help was provided to him.

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, put on trial and sentenced to a lengthy term.