NEW YORK, October 2. /TASS/. Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who is serving a prison sentence in the Danbury prison, Connecticut, will not be transferred to another penitentiary facility, his lawyer Alexei Tarasov told TASS.
“Konstantin will not be transferred to another prison. He still remains in isolation, in quarantine. The information that we have suggests that he will not be transferred to another prison,” Tarasov said.
He went on to say that the Russian citizen was taken out of the prison to consult a gastroenterologist about two weeks ago.
“Having returned from this visit, he was placed in quarantine and is still there. If he is not being transferred to another prison, then why is he still in quarantine? There have been no clear explanation for that,” the lawyer said. “Normally, when [an inmate] is taken to another correctional facility, he is kept [in quarantine] for 10-14 days, but not for a month. Isolation regime conditions in the Danbury prison are very bad.”
Earlier, the Russian Embassy in Washington sent a diplomatic note to the U.S. Department of State with a request not to change the place of Yaroshenko’s detention. According to Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov, the Embassy is concerned about the possibility because the transfer “may negatively affect his physical and mental state of health.”
The pilot’s wife Viktoria told TASS on September 18 that the Federal Bureau of Prisons in Philadelphia and the Danbury prison administration have no grounds to transfer Yaroshenko to another correctional facility.
Yaroshenko earlier filed a request for early release, citing the coronavirus threat. In April, the prison authorities informed the Russian that his request had been rejected.
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.