All news

Health condition of Yaroshenko is stable despite coronavirus in US jail, says wife

According to the spouse of the Russian, four people have already been transferred to house arrest from the jail section where Yaroshenko is kept

ROSTOV-ON-DON, April 17. /TASS/. Health condition of Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who is serving his sentence in a US prison, remains stable, Yaroshenko’s wife Viktoria told TASS on Friday.

"His condition seems to be stable. In the cell they are all in stable condition, but every day they take out someone who gets complications. Today he feels fine, but tomorrow anything can happen," Yaroshenko said.

Earlier, doctors in the prison's medical unit diagnosed the Russian pilot who had complained about coughing and fever, with acute respiratory viral infection.

According to his wife, the situation with the spread of the novel coronavirus in prison remains tense.

"Konstantin called me and said there was a creeping line on Fox News that [US Attorney General] Barr ordered a commission to be sent to Danbury [the city in Connecticut where the prison is located — TASS], as this is the most serious outbreak [of coronavirus] close to New York. Barr is sending a commission there to sort things out, because everyone is already infected there," she said.

Yaroshenko’s defense sent a petition to the US Bureau of Prisons asking the authorities to extend mercy and release the Russian citizen because of the spread of the coronavirus.

US Attorney General William Barr instructed the Bureau of Prisons to transfer prisoners to house arrest due to the threat of the spread of the coronavirus.

Earlier, US Attorney General William Barr ordered the Prison Bureau to review inmates to determine whether some can be removed from prison and placed under house arrest without endangering the public. According to Reuters, this order will primarily affect prisoners in Elkton, Ohio, and Danberry, Connecticut, as the situation with the spread of the new coronavirus is the most serious there.

According to the spouse of the Russian, four people have already been transferred to house arrest from the jail section where Yaroshenko is kept.

To date, more than 671,000 coronavirus cases have been identified in the United States, 33,268 patients have died.

The first outbreak of the disease caused by the coronavirus was registered in Central China in December 2019. In the following months it spread to most of the countries and by March 11, the Wold Health Organization (WHO) declared it as pandemic. To date more than 2 mln people in the world got infected and almost 140,000 died.

Yaroshenko's case

Konstantin Yaroshenko was convicted in the United States on September 7, 2011 and sentenced to 20 years in prison. He pled not guilty and described his arrest as a provocation and the whole case as a frame-up. Yaroshenko was brought to the United States from Liberia, where he was arrested on May 28, 2010. Agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration allegedly exposed Yaroshenko’s criminal intent to transport a large batch of cocaine. The Russian authorities and the pilot’s family in Rostov-on-Don have repeatedly pled for Yaroshenko’s handover to Russia.