10:56 04.05.2016

Savchenko may resume dry hunger strike unless she returns home within several months

2 min read
Savchenko may resume dry hunger strike unless she returns home within several months

Nadia Savchenko may resume a dry hunger strike unless she returns home within several months, although the extradition procedure may take up to one year, Savchenko's lawyer Nikolai Polozov has said.

"Nadia cannot wait for long. She has made this clear, and I do not rule out that she may resume a dry hunger strike in case of any delay. The ordinary [extradition] process takes from six months to a year. This timeframe is totally unacceptable for her," the lawyer said on Channel Five.

Polozov hopes that the Russian authorities would avoid the maximal possible duration of "various kinds of bureaucratic procedures related to the extradition" but would maximally cut their period. "If we speak about any realistic timeframes, it could one, two or no more than three months," he said.

It was reported last week that Polozov had helped Savchenko fill the documents required for her extradition to Ukraine.

In the words of another lawyer, Mark Feygin, Savchenko bluntly refused to plead guilty in filling her extradition documents, but agreed to pay a fine of 30,000 rubles the court ordered to levy on her for the illegal crossing of the border. She pointed out that she was illegally taken from the Ukrainian territory.

Savchenko went on a dry hunger strike on April 6 demanding that she be returned to her home country. She had a telephone conversation with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on April 19 and agreed to stop the hunger strike.

Savchenko has been held in Russian custody since July 2014 after being kidnapped by Russia-backed separatists and illegally taken across the Ukrainian border.

The Donetsk City Court in Russia's Rostov region found Ukrainian servicewoman Nadiya Savchenko guilty of conspiracy to murder Russian journalists Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin for reasons of hatred and sentenced her to 22 years in a general penitentiary on March 22.

The court also convicted her of attempted murder and illegal crossing of the Russian border.

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