KALININGRAD, March 10. /TASS/. Russian national Yury Mel, who was wrongfully convicted in Lithuania in a case related to the events of January 13, 1991, has returned to his home city of Kaliningrad, a spokesperson for the regional government told TASS on Friday.
"Yury Mel has returned to Kaliningrad," press service chief Dmitry Lyskov said. The region’s authorities also thanked the Russian Foreign Ministry for its active efforts to release the Russian.
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday that retired Colonel Yury Mel had been released from a Lithuanian jail and returned to Russia. Mel was imprisoned for nine years. Zakharova stressed that his trial in Lithuania had involved numerous violations, while Lithuania had ignored repeated requests to cancel the sentence.
Mel was detained in 2014 after he had arrived in Lithuania from Kaliningrad on business. In March 2019, he was sentenced to seven years in prison but a court of appeals later extended his sentence. Along with more than 50 other Russian nationals, most of whom were tried in absentia, Mel was charged with crimes against the Lithuanian state and military crimes during the events that took place in the country’s capital of Vilnius on January 13, 1991, when clashes broke out between supporters of the country’s independence and those who wanted Lithuania to remain part of the Soviet Union, killing 14 people and leaving over 700 injured.