The case of Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence in a jail in the US state of Connecticut, may be revised in April 2019, Vyacheslav Tolmachev, adviser of Russia's ombudsman, told the Izvestiya newspaper.
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 05th September, 2018) The case of Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence in a jail in the US state of Connecticut, may be revised in April 2019, Vyacheslav Tolmachev, adviser of Russia's ombudsman, told the Izvestiya newspaper.
He pointed out that the 1983 Council of Europe's Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons created conditions for Yaroshenko's transfer to Russia for further serving the sentence.
"In line with the internal US regulations, requests for the transfer of detained persons for serving the sentence in the countries of their citizenship are submitted once in two years. So the case of Yaroshenko will be revised next April. His lawyers will demand that," Tolmachev said.
Yaroshenko's lawyer Alexey Tarasov told Sputnik that he had no official information about a possible review of the case, but the news could refer to the court studying the request for Yaroshenko's transfer under the Council of Europe's Convention.
"It must be two years since the previous request. The two-year period will run out in April 2019. So the date makes sense. We welcome this step and hope that the case will be decided in [Yaroshenko's] favor this time, the third time, as Yaroshenko received refusals twice before," Tarasov said.
The lawyer added that either the defendants themselves or the state could submit a request for transfer.
"In case of Yaroshenko, I suppose it is the state that is submitting the request," Tarasov said.
Yaroshenko was captured in Liberia in 2010, and was jailed a year later in the United States on charges of conspiring to import drugs into the country. In 2016, the New York Court of Appeals refused to revise the pilot's sentence.
