A prosecutor has lodged an appeal against the eight-year jail term handed down to Russian opposition activist Taisiya Osipova, a spokeswoman for the Smolensk Prosecutor’s Office said on Thursday.
The prosecutor, who had asked for Osipova to be given four years in prison, said the “unreasonable and unjust" sentence should be overturned, the spokeswoman said.
“The court failed to take into consideration the health of Osipova’s child as a mitigating circumstance,” the spokesperson quoted the prosecutor’s statement.
The 28-year-old was arrested in 2010 and imprisoned for ten years late last year after police found four grams of heroin at her home in the western Russian city of Smolensk. Osipova said the drugs were planted by officers after she refused to testify against her husband, Sergei Fomchenkov, a leader of the opposition Other Russia party.
Osipova is the mother of a five-year-old child and suffers from diabetes. Her sentence was overturned on appeal in February after then President Dmitry Medvedev called it "overly harsh," and called for a new probe. The court refused, however, to free Osipova on bail.
