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Jailed Russian pilot denied medical care at US prison, says wife

Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier that Yaroshenko’s issue had not been raised at the Putin-Trump summit

Viktoria Yaroshenko Artiom Geodakyan/TASS

Viktoria Yaroshenko

© Artiom Geodakyan/TASS

ROSTOV-ON-DON, July 20. /TASS/. Prison authorities continue to deny the necessary medical assistance to Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko who is serving a 20-year sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut, Yaroshenko’s wife Viktoria told TASS on Friday.

She earlier said her husband had severe dental problems that stem from the torture he had endured in Liberia. Later on, a source in the Russian Embassy in the US said that Russian diplomats had demanded that the US authorities take measures to provide medical assistance to Yaroshenko.

According to Victoria, the prison authorities refused to allow the Russian citizen to get dental treatment outside the prison.

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Jailed Russian pilot dissatisfied with Danbury jail conditions — attorney

"Everything continues the same way, no medical care has been provided. Our only hope is our government and [the country’s] leadership," Yaroshenko’s wife said.

According to the jailed pilot’s Defense Attorney Alexei Tarasov, he has not received permission to visit Yaroshenko yet. "I keep in touch with him over the phone. As for visiting him, so far, unfortunately, I had no opportunity to do so. The prison has not responded to our request for a visit, although there were repeated attempts to arrange that visit," Tarasov told TASS.

Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova earlier said she would press for Yaroshenko to be pardoned ahead of the meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump in Helsinki in response to a letter from the pilot who complained about torture and poor prison conditions.

However, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Izvestia that Yaroshenko’s issue had not been raised at the summit.

Yaroshenko case

Yaroshenko was arrested in Liberia in May 2010 and was later clandestinely transferred to the United States. In September 2011, he was found guilty of conspiring to smuggle a major cocaine shipment into the US, and sentenced to 20 years behind bars. However, Yaroshenko pleaded not guilty, saying that his arrest was a setup and the case was fabricated.

Until recently, Yaroshenko had been serving out his sentence at the Fort Dix Federal Correctional Institution, but in mid-June he was first transferred to a transit prison in Brooklyn, New York, and then to the Danbury prison, which holds more than 1,400 inmates.

Russian officials and the pilot’s family have persistently requested that Washington extradite him to Russia.

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