Family of wrongfully convicted mother awarded 2 million UAH

The Voroshilovsky District Court in Donetsk have awarded 2 million UAH in material and moral compensation to the mother and three orphaned children of 28-year-old Svitlana Zaitseva.  Ms Zaitsevsa died of tuberculosis contracted while imprisoned for a murder that she didn’t commit.

In 2001 she was sentenced to seven and a half years imprisonment, however a year later the real killer was found, and she was totally cleared and released. She returned home, however, with tuberculosis.  She died in April 2006 leaving three children. The post-mortem from doctors whom Svitlana had, until her imprisonment, only visited in connection with her pregnancies, concludes that she had tuberculosis of both lungs contracted in a penal institution.

Svitlana Zaitseva, who “admitted” committing the murder during the criminal investigation and the trial, did not attempt to have the law enforcement officers who had forced her to confess, brought to justice either while imprisoned or after being released. She apparently told her grandmother that she had been beaten in the SIZO [pre-trial detention centre] and threatened with loss of her parental rights and that she wouldn’t survive her time in the SIZO.

A report in UNIAN based on material from the newspaper Fakty I kommntari.