GENEVA, March 7. /TASS/. Russian human rights commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova said she would request the US Federal Bureau of Prisons to provide medical assistance to Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence in the United States.

Moskalkova told reporters on Wednesday she had received a letter from Yaroshenko’s wife Vikoria, who said her husband’s health was deteriorating.

"In this respect, I gave instructions to prepare a request to the penitentiary authority with a plea to provide him with medical assistance and to transfer him to a confinement that would not harm his health," the Russian official said.

Earlier, Yaroshenko wrote a letter to Russian Ambassador in US Anatoly Antonov, asking to facilitate his transfer to another prison, because he was not receiving proper medical assistance in the Danbury prison in Connecticut.

In November 2018, Yaroshenko requested the prison authorities provide him with medical assistance for his toothache, which was also the cause of digestion problems as he was not able to eat normally.

Later, the pilot’s wife said he was transferred to another cell.

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.

The Russian was first sent to the Fort Dix Federal Correctional Institution, but in mid-June, 2018, 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 on numerous occasions requested that Washington extradite him to Russia.