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Savchenko Lawyer Says Conditions In Hospital Worse than Jail


Days after Ukrainian pilot Nadia Savchenko's transfer to a civilian hospital, her lawyer is demanding she be sent back to a Moscow jail.

Conditions in the "special ward" at Moscow's City Hospital 20 are "substantially worse than expected" and "certainly worse" than the medical unit at Moscow's Matrosskaya Tishina pretrial detention center, attorney Mark Feigin said on Twitter on April 30.

Prison authorities said on April 28 that Savchenko was moved to a civilian hospital because her health had deteriorated.

Feigin said that relatives and the Ukrainian consul have been barred from visiting Savchenko in the hospital, and that the move was making it harder for her lawyers to do their job.

"We will demand her return" to the medical unit at Matrosskaya Tishina, he said.

Savchenko has been jailed in Russia since July, when she says she was illegally brought into the country after being abducted by separatists in Ukraine.

She is charged with complicity in the killing of two Russian journalists who died in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, as well as illegal border crossing.

She denies guilt and conducted a hunger strike for more than 80 days to protest her incarceration in Russia.

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