MOSCOW, August 24 (RAPSI) – A court in the U.S. has refused to release Bogdana Osipova from jail after withdrawal of several charges in a kidnapping case, according to Russia’s High Commissioner for Human Rights Tatiana Moskalkova.
Last week, Moskalkova requested United States Attorney General William Barr to support a sentence mitigation motion filed by Osipova convicted of the so-called kidnapping of her own children. The ombudsman pointed that Osipova’s grave health condition and several serious chronically illnesses endangered her life if she was infected with COVID-19. Therefore, Moskalkova asked Barr to back the Russian woman’s plea for changing her prison sentence to any other non-custodial punishment.
According to the Ombudsman’s Office, on August 21, an appeals court withdrew charges of extortion and demands to indemnify her former husband’s lawyer for the expenses incurred, and remanded the case to the new sentencing. However, the woman was denied release from custody.
Osipova left America with her children in 2014 explaining this action by violence from ex-husband Brian Mobley, a U.S. citizen. Then the court passed the custody of children to Mobley. She returned to the United States in 2017 to file a request for the custody of her daughters but was arrested and then detained on charges of abduction of her children.
In June 2019, the United States District Court for the District of Kansas sentenced her to 7 years behind bars, ordered that she be placed under the U.S. authorities’ supervision after release for 3 years and therefore prohibited her from leaving the country during this period. The court also obliged her to make efforts necessary to the children’s return to America.