Pen & Paper lawyers step in Naama Issachar case

The mother of Naama Issachar, an Israeli convicted in Russia for smuggling of drugs, published a video address with a plea to let her daughter return to her home country. The recording has become available to RBC.

“I want to say that she comes from a country with a different mentality and is now in jail, not understanding the language or the mentality. I am only asking you to let her go home, she never committed anything she’s being accused of,” Yaffa Issachar said in the video.

Partner of Pen & Paper Attorneys at Law Aleksey Dobrynin, who took part in the filming, claimed that the main objective of the Israeli’s defence is to turn the criminal case inside out and make it clear to the court that the sentence has nothing to do with lawfulness, relevance or justice.

According to the lawyer, the case lacks elements of crime specified in the drug smuggling article, under which Issachar has been convicted.

“Any deed committed on the territory of a state becomes a crime only in case it poses public danger for its citizens,” another lawyer of Pen & Paper Vadim Klyuvgant added, explaining that the Israeli woman has not posed a similar threat to Russia.

Israeli citizen Naama Issachar was detained in early April in one of Moscow airports, where 9 g of hashish were found on her. The girl admitted to possession of drugs, but rejected the accusations of smuggling. The court sentenced the Israeli to seven and a half years of imprisonment. Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu sent three letters to the Russian authorities with a request to pardon the convict.

As reported by Haaretz, the Israeli Prime Minister discussed Issachar’s release with Russian President Vladimir Putin in mid-October. According to the paper, the Kremlin planned to exchange the Israeli for Russian hacker Aleksey Burkov detained in Tel-Aviv in 2015. However Israel declined the proposal, reluctant to ruin the relations with the US.