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Putin pardons two Belarusian men convicted for smuggling cough pills

Russian President Vladimir Putin has pardoned two Belarusian men who were convicted on smuggling charges at a trial held in Moscow in September 2007.

In a statement issued on Friday after Mr. Putin’s visit to Minsk, the Kremlin’s press office said that the Russian president had granted clemency to Syarhey Lahun and Alyaksandr Chachuraw, both born in 1985, on the basis of “the principles of humanity.”

A judge of Moscow’s Tverskoi District Court sentenced the two men to 14 years in prison each on a charge of smuggling psychotropic substances into Russia and illicit trade in them.

Messrs. Lahun and Chachuraw were arrested in a sting operation in Moscow in March 2007 after smuggling 1,000 Polish-manufactured cough pills, legal in Belarus but illegal in Russia for a cough suppressant called dextromethorphan, to an undercover agent in Russia who had introduced himself to them on the Internet as a pharmacist.

In October 2007, the Moscow District Court cut their prison sentences to nine years. //BelaPAN