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Russian pilot’s wife to visit him in US jail no earlier than Aug. 24 — source

Yaroshenko’s wife and daughter have not seen him for over seven years

Victoria Yaroshenko Artyom Geodakyan/TASS

Victoria Yaroshenko

© Artyom Geodakyan/TASS

NEW YORK, August 19. /TASS/. The wife of Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence in a US prison, will meet with him no earlier than August 24, a diplomatic source has told TASS.

"Victoria Yaroshenko will arrive at the JFK airport in New York on board Air France Flight 0010 on August 20, at 19:15 local time (12:15 Moscow time)," he said, adding that officials of the Russian Consulate General in New York will "meet and accommodate her."

"The date of the meeting depends on when visits to inmates are permitted in the Danbury prison," the source said, adding that it will take place "no earlier than August 24."

According to the prison’s website, meetings with inmates are permitted on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays.

Yaroshenko’s US attorney Alexei Tarasov said Victoria Yaroshenko expects to meet her husband more than once during her stay in the United States. He said she will be accompanied by the couple’s daughter, Yekaterina. They are expected to stay in the country until early September.

Yaroshenko’s wife and daughter have not seen him for over seven years. According to Victoria Yaroshenko, they decided to come to the US so that the daughter could see her father.

During the last meeting, the pilot’s daughter was still at school. "The last time we saw him was in 2011, when they passed a sentence in the US. The court passed a sentence, and we left, we haven’t seen each other after that," Viktoria said on Saturday.

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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