MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 08th May, 2020) Russian citizens currently in jail in the US must be released as their lives and health are under threat amid a serious outbreak of COVID-19 in the US prison system, Russian Ambassador in Washington Anatoly Antonov said on Friday.
"We are again calling upon the U.S. authorities to demonstrate mercy and good will. Free the Russian citizens. Their life and health are under the threat," the ambassador said in an open letter addressed to the US State Department, Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Antonov cited US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who on April 29 called for the immediate release of all US citizens "wrongfully detained" abroad. Pompeo stated that if those US citizens contract COVID-19 and die, Washington will hold any government "strictly responsible."
The ambassador added that the epidemiological situation in the US penal system had deteriorated severely as the coronavirus disease has begun to spread rapidly.
"Many inmates are infected, some of them have deceased. There is hardly any medical assistance for the convicted, neither there is coronavirus testing. The prisoners are preponderantly left without individual sanitary equipment and facial masks due to a shortage in them," Antonov wrote.
In recent weeks, Moscow has urged the US to release prisoners such as Konstantin Yaroshenko and Bogdana Osipova, both currently serving sentences at the Danbury jail in the state of New York, the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova have both urged Washington to release jailed Russian citizens amid the epidemiological crisis.
As of Tuesday, the US Federal Bureau of Prisons has confirmed 2,646 cases of the coronavirus disease among the inmate population since the start of the outbreak, resulting in 44 deaths. Additionally, 244 members of staff have also tested positive for the disease.
