Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who is serving out a 20-year sentence in a US jail, has been receiving no medical assistance and has to take medicines by himself but the jail shop has recently run out of the medicines he needs, the pilot’s wife Viktoria told TASS on Thursday.
"He has to think for himself what medicines to buy because there is no doctor there. They promised to call him a gastroenterologist but did nothing. He has to choose from what the jail shop offers. He makes a list of the medicines available there and emails them to us, we read instructions to understand how to take them and write down prescriptions for him," Viktoria said.
Yaroshenko’s wife added that they "found a good medicine that was available but the shop has run out of it so it will not be available for two weeks."
Viktoria told TASS earlier that she and her daughter Yekaterina would arrive in the US on August 20. According to Viktoria, the time of their stay will depend "on the situation, we will see how many visits are allowed and how much money we have left." She added that some friends had bought tickets for her and her daughter.
According to earlier reports, the two will stay in New York City, 100 kilometers from the Danbury prison, and will be able to visit Yaroshenko four times a week for two hours.
Yaroshenko’s family members, who live in Russia’s southern city of Rostov-on-Don, haven’t seen the pilot for over seven years.
Yaroshenko case
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.
Until recently, Yaroshenko had been serving out his sentence at the Fort Dix Federal Correctional Institution, but in mid-June he was first transferred to a transit prison in Brooklyn, New York, and then to the Danbury prison, which holds more than 1,400 inmates.
Russian officials and the pilot’s family have persistently requested that Washington extradite him to Russia.
