Russian pilot Yaroshenko convicted in U.S. hopes Russia brings up his case at UN Human Rights Council - newspaper
MOSCOW. Aug 30 (Interfax) - Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who is serving 20 years in the U.S. Fort Dix prison, hopes that Russian human rights commissioner Tatiana Moskalkova will bring up the issue of his return to Russia at a meeting of the UN Human Rights Council, the Izvestia newspaper said on Wednesday.
"Russia's formal appeal to the United Nations is the only mechanism I pin hope on after so many attempts to bring me back home. This is the last chance to return to may family. Russian human rights commissioner Moskalkova has discussed the option with my wife Viktoria. I lost hope after my mother died. Yet the promise made by Mrs. Moskalkova has put me back together," the newspaper quoted Yaroshenko as saying.
In the opinion of the pilot's wife, Viktoria Yaroshenko, no one but the Russian authorities would be able to return her husband to Russia, the newspaper said.
"We have discussed ways of returning him to Russia [with Moskalkova]. Every legal mechanism has been used, and all we can hope for is political will. Fundamental principles of human rights were laid down in the United Nations. This is the only organization capable of pulling Konstantin out of prison," Viktoria Yaroshenko said.
The office of the Russian human rights commissioner told the newspaper that Moskalkova might speak at a meeting of the UN Human Rights Council this year, and the Yaroshenko case might be brought up there.
"November is the hypothetical month of Moskalkova's speech in New York. We have to wait for an answer of the U.S. Department of State or U.S. President Donald Trump. It is hard to say whether this trip will be made, we are not sure," the commissioner's press secretary Alexei Zlovedov told Izvestia.
Yaroshenko was arrested in Liberia on May 28, 2010, on the counts of plotting to transport a large batch of cocaine and deported to the United States. A U.S. court sentenced him to 20 years in prison on September 7, 2011.