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US Department of Justice studies Russia’s request concerning Yaroshenko’s repatriation

Russian diplomats in cooperation with the lawyers and Yaroshenko’s wife will continue to exert every effort to speed up the pilot’s repatriation

© AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

WASHINGTON, May 14. /TASS/. The US Department of Justice is studying the Russian side’s request about pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko’s repatriation, Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov said in a letter for Yaroshenko, a copy of which TASS has at its disposal.

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Russian pilot Yaroshenko starts receiving medical aid in US prison — wife

"Currently the US Department of Justice is studying the request of the Russian Justice Ministry on your return to the motherland under the Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons as of 1983. We demanded that primary importance be attached to the given issue, considering the humanitarian component, the state of health and the served sentence term," the document said.

"We are keeping in contact with the US Department of State. On May 6 this year we held a meeting in the diplomatic mission and handed over a note with the demand that high-quality medical help be provided to you in cooperation with the Federal Bureau of Prisons. We pointed to the need to carry out regular examinations for preventive treatment," the ambassador said.

Russian diplomats in cooperation with the lawyers and Yaroshenko’s wife will continue to exert every effort to speed up the Russian’s repatriation, Antonov said.

On May 8, Russian Commissioner for Human Rights Tatyana Moskalkova reported that she plans to address the US authorities again asking to extradite Yaroshenko to Russia in light of his state of health.

Yaroshenko’s case

Yaroshenko was sentenced to 20 years behind bars in the US on September 7, 2011. He pled not guilty and believes that his arrest was a setup, and that his case was fabricated. The pilot was whisked off to the US from Liberia, where he had been arrested on May 28, 2010. US undercover agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration allegedly found Yaroshenko guilty of intending to smuggle a large batch of cocaine.

Until June 2018, Yaroshenko had been kept in the Federal Correctional Institution (Fort Dix), including one month spent in a solitary confinement cell. In mid-June, he was first transferred to a transit prison in the New York City borough of Brooklyn and then to a correctional facility in Danbury, Connecticut, which can hold more than 1,400 prisoners.

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