All news

US prison denies medical assistance to jailed Russian pilot Yaroshenko — wife

According to earlier reports, Yaroshenko has serious dental problems, which began after he was tortured in Liberia

ROSTOV-ON-DON, July 10. /TASS/. US prison authorities have denied medical assistance to Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence in the Danbury prison in Connecticut, his wife Victoria Yaroshenko told TASS on Tuesday.

According to earlier reports, Yaroshenko has serious dental problems, which began after he was tortured in Liberia. He underwent surgery in December 2017.

"Everything stays absolutely the same, there is no medical assistance. [Konstantin] has requested medical assistance [from the prison authorities], but it was denied to him," she said.

According to Victoria Yaroshenko, her husband experiences regular discomfort, because he has to share the cell with some 100 other inmates.

"It’s hard to get used to that," she said. "Just imagine staying in such a big company 24/7. The noise is incessant."

Last week, Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova said she would press for Yaroshenko to be pardoned ahead of the meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump, scheduled to take place in Helsinki on July 16. She noted that the Russian pilot’s pardon would become an important move for improving relations between Russia and the US.

Earlier, Yaroshenko wrote a letter to Moskalkova in which he complained to the ombudsman of tortures, bad confinement conditions and the absence of medical treatment.

Yaroshenko case

The Russian pilot has been taken to the US from Liberia, where he had been arrested on May 28, 2010. Undercover agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) accused Yaroshenko of a criminal intent to smuggle a large batch of cocaine.

Yaroshenko was sentenced to 20 years behind bars by a US court on September 7, 2011. He pleads not guilty and believes his arrest to be a provocation and his case to have been made up.

Until recently, he has been kept in the Fort Dix prison in New Jersey. He spent his last month in this prison in a special housing unit.

In mid-June, the Russian pilot was taken to a detention center in Brooklyn, from where he was transferred to the Danbury prison, a federal penitentiary with lower requirements for security, which holds more than 1,400 inmates.

Russian officials and the pilot’s family, which lives in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, have repeatedly requested US authorities to extradite him.