N.B. The reference to Dolgov in the second to last graf has been corrected. The man named in that graf should have been Ustinov, the suspect, not a Russian Foreign Ministry official.
MOSCOW, August 14 (RIA Novosti) – Moscow is outraged by Lithuania’s decision to extradite a Russian national to the United States, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.
Earlier in the day, Lithuania fulfilled a US request to extradite alleged arms dealer Dmitry Ustinov. Ustinov, 46, was detained at Vilnius Airport in Lithuania on April 15 after he arrived from the US to purportedly negotiate a deal to sell night-vision equipment used by the US military.
“[We are] outraged by the fact that American special services and law enforcement agencies are still trying to legitimize the practice of arresting and detaining Russian nationals in third countries on frivolous grounds,” Konstantin Dolgov, the Foreign Ministry’s point man for human rights, said in a statement posted on the ministry’s website.
Moscow will continue providing assistance to Ustinov to make sure his rights are upheld and help get him back to Russia as soon as possible, the statement said.
On July 22, a Vilnius court ordered Ustinov to be extradited to the US, where he faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted on charges of money laundering and smuggling export-restricted military equipment.
Ustinov, whose detention was based on an arrest warrant from the US state of Delaware, pleaded not guilty in court.
