Russian released from Danbury prison to free ex-Marine
Danbury’s federal prison was thrust into the spotlight this week when a Russian pilot, convicted of conspiring to smuggle drugs into the United States, was released from the facility as part of a high-profile prisoner swap that will free U.S. Marine Trevor Reed.
Little is known about who exactly is housed in the federal prison on Route 37. But one of its inmates, 53-year-old Konstantin Yaroshenko, had been the subject of intense diplomatic negotiations for years between two countrie, even recently as they are at odds over the recent invasion of Ukraine.
Typically not among the federal penitentiaries to receive much attention, Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury is classified by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons as a low-security facility that houses just about 1,000 inmates.
But on Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that Yaroshenko, serving a 20-year sentence, had been freed from the facility and will return to Russia. Federal court records also confirmed that Yaroshenko had been housed at the Danbury prison.
Danbury officials, including police, were not notified of the release, said John Kleinhans, spokesperson for Mayor Dean Esposito. Federal officials in the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York who prosecuted Yarsoshenko, did not respond to a request for comment. Federal officials in Connecticut declined to comment.
Yaroshenko was convicted in 2011 after a three-week trial, federal court records show. He was accused of transporting “thousand-kilogram” quantities of cocaine by air throughout South America, Africa and Europe, federal prosecutors said.
Before he was taken into custody, authorities said Yaroshenko was working to expand his operation into the United States, which led to the charges in this country.
How Yaroshenko came to be housed in FCI Danbury and why Russia officials keyed in on Yaroshenko is unclear. According to the U.S. Bureau of Prison, it is the agency’s sole discretion where inmates are placed after sentencing.
Typically, the agency attempts to place inmates within 500 miles of where they will be released, it says. It is not clear where Yaroshenko, who had an anticipated release date of 2027, would have been sent after his sentence was over.
The Bureau of Prisons says that it weighs certain other factors including security, program and population concerns when determining where to place inmates.
While little has been reported about Yaroshenko ahead of his release in the prisoner swap with Russia, his incarceration was a focus of top authorities in his native country.
Russia’s High Commissioner for Human Rights Tatiana Moskalkova had asked thenPresident Donald Trump in 2017 to pardon the ailing Yaroshenko.
“In my letter, considering the humanitarian side of the issue, I asked the president to release Konstantin Yaroshenko from further serving his sentence, pointing to the length of his imprisonment and the progressive deterioration of his health,” a statement from Moskalkova read. However, it appears the pardon was never granted.
ABC News reported in 2019 that an attorney for Yaroshenko had heard rumors at the time of a prisoner swap involving Yaroshenko, but had heard similar rumors in the years since his arrest in 2010.
Yaroshenko’s release this week follows repeated efforts by the Russian pilot to garner release from the Danbury facility and sent home to Russia.
He had sought a “compassionate release” from FCI Danbury in April 2020 based on medical conditions that he claimed would make him vulnerable to COVID-19, court records show. His ailments included arthritis, hypertension and post-traumatic stress, his lawyers wrote in court filings. He had sought instead to be sent home to Russia.
The warden of the Danbury prison denied his release, court documents said. In September 2021, a federal judge also denied his request for compassionate release while noting the Danbury prison “appears to have effectively contained the virus,” a federal court ruling states.
The judge also pointed out in the ruling that during sentencing the court referred to his illegal activities as “a crime of this colossal size.”
He had served more than half of his sentence when the Biden administration began negotiating with Russian authorities for a prisoner exchange that would free Reed, reports said.
Negotiations continued, despite high tensions between Russia and the United States over the Ukraine invasion, officials said.