Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will pardon a jailed actress for setting on fire her ex-husband's apartment after he took away their daughter, the Kremlin said
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will pardon a jailed actress for setting on fire her ex-husband's apartment after he took away their daughter, the Kremlin said
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A French court had sentenced her to three years in prison for "damaging property by life-threatening methods." But she was later shifted to Russia to serve her sentence after the approval of a Russian request filed on the basis of the Russian-French Convention of 2003.
Actress Natalia Zakharova, serving a three-year sentence set ablaze her French ex-husband's apartment after he took away their daughter.
Zakharova has been fighting for custody of her daughter for more than 10 years.
The actress, suffering from a number of illnesses, appealed to Medvedev for pardon May 26.
"The relevant documents are being readied for the head of state to sign," the president's press secretary Natalya Timakova said Thursday.
The actress had married Patrick Ouari in 1993 and left Russia for France. In 1995, Zakharova gave birth to a daughter, Masha, but the couple divorced soon afterward.
Zakharova was initially given custody of the couple's daughter, Marie Zakharova-Ouari, but she was put in a foster family in France in 1999 after Ouari and Zakharova accused each other of violence toward the child.
In 2004, Zakharova was deprived of her parental rights.
The actress fled to Moscow in 2006.
In the same year a Russian court recognised her parental rights, but a French court upheld its decision in 2007.
Zakharova was arrested on charges of arson soon after returning to France in January 2010 to participate in court hearings on her parental rights.
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