Ukrainian woman charged with child trafficking suffering from psychological problems, lawyer says
Ukrainian national Yulia Suslyak arrived in Georgia with ten children on April 8 and was arrested later on April 25 for child trafficking. Later, on July 19, she was released for there were not enough evidence to keep her in prison. Photo: IPN.
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The lawyer of Ukrainian national Yulia Suslyak, who was arrested in April and later released by Georgian police in July for alleged child trafficking, says that his client is suffering from psychological issues.
Lawyer Zurab Todua says that Suslyak is currently undergoing psychological rehab in the Ukrainian town of Khmelnytskyi.
He said medical experts have confirmed that Suslyak is suffering from psychological issues.
Lawyer Todua has started preparing a lawsuit to present to the European Court of Human Rights against Georgia for the violation of Suslyak’s rights.
Yulia Suslyak was arrested earlier in April, 2019. Photo: IPN.
The lawyer says that Ukraine may also be included as a defendant in the case with Georgia.
He says Georgian officials violated Suslyak’s rights as she spent three months in illegal detention.
Todua states the Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine has been investigating the trafficking case against Suslyak but she has not been questioned yet.
Georgia released Ukrainian national Yulia Suslyak, who had been detained for child trafficking by Georgian police earlier in April.
Ukrainian national Yulia Suslyak arrived in Georgia with ten children on April 8 and was arrested later on April 25 for child trafficking, for which she would have served 14 to 17 years in prison if convicted.
Police reported that the woman came to Georgia from Russia and planned to move to the occupied territory of Abkhazia with the children she was accompanying.
Four of the children belonged to Yulia while the other six belonged to her husband Yuri Suslyak. Photo: IPN.
Police found documents for the ten children which all gave their surnames as hers. Police suspected child trafficking because four of the children were born in 2017.
Later, that four of the children belonged to Yulia while the other six belonged to her husband Yuri Suslyak.
Afterwards, on June 7, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sent a plane to Georgia to have the ten children returned to Ukraine.
Yulia Suslyak was released from prison on July 19, 2019.
Lawyer Zurab Todua says Sulslyak’s husband, Yuri Suslyak, is currently in Abkhazia and he will face two years in jail if he comes to Georgia as he has violated the Law of Georgia on Occupied Territories.
The law reads that the ‘entry of the occupied territories by foreign citizens and stateless persons from any other direction, except from those defined in the first paragraph of this article, shall be prohibited and punishable under the Criminal Code of Georgia.’