NEW YORK, June 25. /TASS/. Bogdana Osipova, sentenced to seven years in US jail for ‘kidnapping’ her own children, released an open letter on Tuesday to thank the Russian government and all people who supported her during the trial and after the verdict was passed.
"I would like to express by huge gratitude to my family, relatives, friends, my Russian and US lawyers, the Russian government and its representatives and all people all over the world who supported me in those difficult times. Thank you all," Osipova said in a letter, written in the Leavenworth Penitentiary, Kansas.
"It’s hard to believe in the discriminatory attitude, hatred and lawlessness demonstrated by US Attorney Jason Hart and Judge Eric Melgren," she said. "My defense team is filing an appeal. We will keep our struggle for truth and justice!"
She said the US justice system "persecuted a mother of three children, who was fleeing a domestic tyrant and abuser to save her children and her own life."
Bogdana Osipova case
On June 6, a US federal court in Wichita, Kansas, sentenced Osipova to 84 months in a federal prison for "unlawfully taking her daughter to Russia and demanding money before allowing the American father to have custody of the girl."
Thirty-eight year-old Bogdana Osipova, known by her ex-husband’s name Mobley in the US court documents, has dual (Russian and American) citizenship. She has three underage children, among them younger girls from her ex-spouse Brian Mobley. The US authorities accuse Osipova of taking their elder daughter without her ex-husband’s permission out of the US to Russia while being pregnant in 2014. At the time, their divorce proceedings had already commenced.
Their youngest daughter was born in Russia the same year, after that the divorce was finalized. A US court decided that both children should live with their father, while a Russian court determined that Russia should be their place of residence and the father was ordered to pay alimony.
FBI agents detained the Russian woman on September 28, 2017 in Wichita, Kansas, where she had arrived to sort out the child custody issue. She filed a suit at the local family court to contest the decision of the father being awarded full custody. The court accepted the claim and announced a date for a hearing, but two days later FBI agents arrested the woman because of a criminal charge that had been pressed by her former husband.
During the case hearings in the Wichita Court, Bogdana Osipova agreed to bring the younger children back to the US expecting to be freed later, however, a Russian court barred the children from leaving the country in their best interest. The girls are currently living in Russia with a guardian, Osipova’s aunt.