Naama Issachar's mother sends letter to Putin requesting pardon
Na'ama was arrested for smuggling cannabis into the Russian Federation and sentenced to seven years in prison.
By ROSSELLA TERCATINYaffa and Naama Issachar(photo credit: Courtesy)
The mother of Naama Issachar has sent a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin asking to grant her daughter a pardon, The Jerusalem Post's sister publication Maariv reported on Sunday. Her daughter is currently serving a prison sentence in Russia.Yafa sent the letter through the Greek Orthodox Patriarch.“Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich! I, Yaffa Issachar, the mother of Na’ama Issachar, who has been in prison for seven months, plead with the heartache of a mother to pardon my daughter and return her to her family,” the message read.Issachar was flying from India back home to Israel via Moscow when the Russian authorities found a small amount of cannabis in her luggage.Even though her suitcase was being moved from one plane to the other, and there was no way she could reach it while at the airport, she was arrested for smuggling drugs into the country and sentenced to seven years in prison.In Israel, the arrest and sentencing have been widely seen as a Russian attempt to keep an Israeli citizen as a bargaining chip for the return of Russian citizen and alleged hacker Alexei Burkov.At the end of October, Justice Minister Amir Ohana signed off on the extradition of Burkov to the United States, where he is wanted on charges of credit fraud.
