MOSCOW, December 8 (RAPSI, Diana Gutsul) - The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) addressed a series of questions to the parties to a case launched by Vladimir Topekhin, a paralyzed Russian national sentenced to four years in prison for fraud, his lawyer Svetlana Sidorkina told RAPSI on Monday.

Last January, in a ‘visiting session’ at the Matrosskaya Tishina pretrial detention facility, Moscow's Tverskoy District Court sentenced Topekhin to six years in prison. The Moscow City Court mitigated the sentence on February 20 to four years. Last summer, a court in Kostroma ruled to release Topekhin due to a serious illness.

On 19 October 2013, Topekhin suffered the paralysis of the lower half of his body which allegedly resulted from a serious spine injury sustained in a traffic accident prior to his arrest.

In his claim filed with the ECHR Topekhin complained that he had not received adequate medical care, as well as that he had been left without proper assistance with his basic needs in detention. He also complained about the conditions of his transport from a detention facility in Moscow to the colony in Kostroma. Finally, the applicant complained that his lengthy detention on remand had lacked any grounds and that his appeals against the detention orders had not been examined speedily.

Topekhin, who was an auditor, received 10 million rubles ($186,000) from the alleged fraud victim by promising him assistance in opening a forensic expertise center in Moscow, according to investigators. He was convicted of fraud for not having fulfilled his obligations and keeping the money.