NEW YORK, April 3. /TASS/. The defense of Konstantin Yaroshenko, who is serving a sentence in the Danbury prison in Connecticut, has applied to the US’ Federal Bureau of Prisons with a request to release the Russian pilot due to the potential threat of the novel coronavirus for his health, his attorney Alexey Tarasov told TASS.
"We just sent an application addressed to the Bureau of Prisons and head of the prison in Danbury in Connecticut to release Konstantin Yaroshenko. The issue is about permanently releasing him for leaving [the US] for his home city of Rostov-on-Don where his wife and daughter live," he said.
The application focuses on the fact that "Yaroshenko suffers from a number of chronic illnesses and has already served more than half of the sentence," Tarasov said. Meanwhile, the novel coronavirus pandemic has "affected the Danbury prison where prisoners and guards have been infected," he said referring to the official data provided by the US’ Federal Bureau of Prisons. The Russian pilot’s immune system is weakened, which means that "if he is infected by the coronavirus that will lead to a deplorable result," Tarasov noted.
This particular motion appeals to the right of the head official of any prison "in mercy to petition the court for reduction of the sentence of the prisoner if the latter has served half of the sentence," the attorney explained. In this case, the issue may be about a federal court for the Southern District of the state of New York or theoretically about a court in the state of Connecticut. He found an application to the Bureau of Prisons more forceful than the initially planned application to the federal court for the Southern District of New York. "We decided to use the mechanism that I suggest is more forceful now, as the circumstances are changing fast and we should act as quickly as possible," he added.
According to the Johns Hopkins University, which publishes its own statistics based on aggregate data from federal and regional authorities, more than 242,100 coronavirus patients have been identified in the United States, 5,850 people have died, and 8,991 have recovered. In Connecticut, 3,557 confirmed cases of COVID-19 have been reported, with the death toll of 85 people.
Konstantin Yaroshenko was convicted in the United States on September 7, 2011 and sentenced to 20 years in prison. He pled not guilty and condemned his arrest as a provocation and the whole case as an utter set-up. Yaroshenko was transferred to the United States from Liberia, where he was arrested on May 28, 2010. Agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration allegedly exposed Yaroshenko’s criminal intent to transport a large batch of cocaine.