A mother of four who is pregnant with a fifth child has become a cause celebre after a court jailed her for three years even though it could have waived the sentence under a legal provision allowing leniency for mothers with young children.
Former Yukos lawyer Svetlana Bakhmina, a mother of three who failed to receive leniency when jailed on politically tinged charges in 2006, is spearheading a campaign to secure the release of the mother, Yulia Kruglova, a regional director for a Dutch-owned insurance company who was jailed in July on embezzlement charges.
The campaign has won the support of children's ombudsman Pavel Astakhov and the Public Chamber. Even prosecutors have filed an appeal.
"I was so amazed by the story that I decided to help," Bakhmina said in a telephone interview.
It is not unusual for a mother to be sent to prison in Russia, but Kruglova, a mother of four little children, was ordered by a judge to immediately start serving three years in prison just two months before her fifth child was supposed to be born by Caesarean section.
Kruglova, 36, who ran the Oranta insurance company's Tolyatti branch, was found guilty of embezzling 16 million rubles ($520,000) from the company and ordered jailed by Tolyatti's Central District Court on July 19.
The mother, who is now hospitalized in a prison clinic, is scheduled to undergo a Caesarean section on Sept. 20.
Three days before that, on Sept. 17, the Samara Regional Court is scheduled to consider separate appeals from prosecutors, who want the prison sentence lifted, and Kruglova's lawyers, who want the mother moved to a better-equipped hospital outside the prison.
The Moscow Times
