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Ukraine's jailed ex-pilot to be convoyed to new detention center in Russia on July 25

Nadezhda Savchenko will be convoyed to a detention center in Russia’s southern Rostov region

MOSCOW, July 24. /TASS/. Nadezhda Savchenko, a Ukrainian former pilot charged with complicity to the murder of two Russian journalists in Ukraine last year and illegal crossing of the Russian border, will be convoyed to a detention center in Russia’s southern Rostov region on July 25, the website of the Russian human rights ombudsperson said on Friday.

"On July 17, 2015, Nadezhda Savchenko was convoyed by a regular railway sentry group to the city of Rostov-on-Don. On July 25, 2015, she will be taken to a destination at a detention centre of the Russian federal penitentiary service in the Rostov region. She is in satisfactory condition," the website said citing an official answer to the ombudsperson’s request.

Earlier, Russian human rights ombudsperson Ella Pamfilova referred requests to the prosecutor general’s office and the federal penitentiary service about Savchenko’s location.

Russian investigators say that Savchenko, the gunner of a Mi-24 helicopter, joined the notorious Aidar battalion during combat operations in the Lugansk region of eastern Ukraine in June 2014. Noting the position of a filming crew of the Russian State Broadcasting Company and other civilians, she allegedly reported the data to mortar-equipped personnel who fired on the crew and the civilians. As a result, correspondent Igor Kornelyuk and sound engineer Anton Voloshin were killed on June 17, 2014. Savchenko keeps on pleading not guilty.

Preliminary hearings of Savchenko’s case will be held at the court in the town of Donetsk in Russia’s Rostov region on July 30. Her lawyers say the trial will take abut one month.

If found guilty, Savchenko faces up to 25 years in prison. Her lawyers told TASS earlier that their client had asked her case to be considered by a jury.