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Russian pilot jailed in US given on-the-spot surgery, suffers from pain - lawyer

"He was not informed beforehand and neither any preparations were made nor any analyses were taken," Tarasov said
Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko ITAR-TASS, archive
Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko
© ITAR-TASS, archive

NEW YORK, January 24. /TASS/. Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who serves a 20-year prison term in the United States, has undergone surgery without any proper preparation. He was denied the right to have rehabilitation and to receive needed medicines as he cannot walk and suffers from pain, Yaroshenko’s lawyer Alexey Tarasov told TASS on Saturday.

Yaroshenko was given surgery on Thursday 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. "On Wednesday, Konstantin 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 anaesthesia, Yaroshenko said," Tarasov went on to say, noting that the Russian pilot was allowed to stay 20 minutes at the hospital after he recovered from anaesthesia 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 his mates told the guards about his condition but eventually no medical help was provided to him.

"At a medical unit of the jail, overnight to Friday, Yaroshenko was given a pill, a painkiller as doctors say," the lawyer said. "The pill failed to relieve his sufferings. He cannot walk and says he has never experienced anything like that for a long period of time."

Besides, the Russian pilot was told that the penitentiary had no medicines available to ease his sufferings.

"On the one hand, we were speaking for many years that he needed an operation," Tarasov said. "On the other hand, such medical assistance - without any precaution, without any drugs and without an opportunity just to stay in bed - raises eyebrows."

Russian embassy and consulate-general in the United States have been notified on the situation. Yaroshenko is pressing for a meeting with Russian diplomats.

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, after which he was put on trial and sentenced to a lengthy term.