Post Staff Writer
 The Navstar-1�s Captain Mykola Mazurenko and Chief Mate Ivan Soschenko are shown in a Baghdad court in this Oct. 13 file photo. Though the men were sentenced to seven years in prison, their wives wait for them in Kerch, hoping for a reprieve. (Photo: Reuters) |
Ivan and Yulia Soschenko didn�t celebrate their 24th wedding anniversary on Dec. 1 together, like most married couples. Yulia Soschenko was at home in Kerch, and her husband was beginning to serve a seven-year sentence in a cold Iraqi prison 50 kilometers from Baghdad. Her husband is an example of �justice being done� in the new Iraq, according to Iraq�s U.S. administrator, Paul Bremer. |
Ivan Soschenko, 47, was convicted on Oct. 13 of smuggling diesel fuel out of Iraq. For Bremer, Soschenko is an example of the swift justice needed in the Iraq the coalition is building.
�No one is above the law in the new Iraq � be they rich, prominent, influential or foreign,� said Iraqi Justice Minister Hashim Al-Shibli the day the sentences were handed down. �They will face the same justice as everyone else in this nation of laws.�
�In a country such as Iraq, where there has been much injustice, the quest for justice takes on a special importance and urgency,� said Bremer in an address on Nov. 14. �Until liberation, some people would sell Iraqi fuel outside the country. It was against the law, but that was not a problem for people who were friends of the regime.�
�Those days are over.�
Soschenko�s days as a free man ended on Aug. 4. He was first officer aboard the Navstar-1, a tanker owned by a former Iraqi citizen now residing in Dubai. The ship sailed under the Panamanian flag and had a Ukrainian crew.
After the vessel was seized by British troops in the Persian Gulf, Soschenko and Capt. Mykola Mazurenko, also of Kerch, were charged with illegally exporting the ship�s load � 3,500 tons of diesel fuel. Bremer said the fuel was critically needed in Iraq.
The ship�s 19 other Ukrainian crewmembers were released without charge.
For Soschenko�s wife, the last three months have been anything but easy.
She last saw her husband almost a year ago in January when he went to sea. The last time she spoke with him on the phone, before his arrest, he told her that everything was okay.
Then, in August, coalition forces detained the Navstar-1.
Yulia Soschenko said that she feels as though her life has unraveled since.
�Here I was, a person who hears that the love of her life is in jail in a foreign country � how do you think I felt?� she said. �Shock. Just shock.�
After a two-day trial, Soschenko and Mazurenko were sentenced to seven years in an Iraqi prison. They face an additional three years if they don�t pay $2.5 million in fines.
It is unlikely that the men will be able to pay the fines, Yulia Soschenko said.
The woman has contacted various coalition embassies searching for answers or encouragement, but has found none. She�s hesitant to criticize anyone � the British who apprehended the ship, the Americans who administer Iraq, the Iraqis who hold her husband, or even the Ukrainian government � for fear that it will upset someone important and hurt her husband�s chances for leniency.
She�s found some solace with Svitlana Mazurenko, the wife of the ship�s 67-year-old captain. The two women weren�t acquainted before their husbands sailed to the Middle East, but now both are in the same boat � alone and husbandless.
�We met when this tragedy happened,� said Svitlana Mazurenko, who is retired. She and her husband have a son, daughter and two young grandchildren.
�I fear for my husband,� said Yulia Soschenko, 46 and a native of Kharkiv oblast. �I am certain that my husband is innocent. He doesn�t deserve any sentence, whether it�s 20 years, seven years or one day.�
Ivan Soschenko first went to sea soon after his daughter, Ivanka, was born in 1980. His wife said that the work was not as lucrative as coalition prosecutors claimed during the brief trial.
�There isn�t good money in sailing,� she said. She wouldn�t say how much her husband had earned last year, but said that it �wasn�t worth the work he did.�
Yulia Soschenko is employed as an English teacher in Kerch. She has kept working to provide for herself, her daughter and mother, and also to help support her husband�s 70-year-old mother.
She also owes her husband�s lawyer, Talib al-Zubaidi, $1,250 in legal fees.
Yulia credits al-Zubaidi with the relatively lighter sentences her husband and Mazurenko were given. She also hopes that al-Zubaidi will be able to have the sentences reduced, or the convictions overturned, when an appeals court passes judgment on the case later this month.
�I did my best,� al-Zubaidi told the Post on Dec. 1 from Baghdad. �I am contacting many [of the 15 judges] on the court of appeals. The prosecution wanted 20 years. I don�t want even a seven-year sentence.�
Al-Zubaidi argued in court that the ship belonged to Adnan Dalsim Mahmoud, director of the Dubai-based Navstar Company. He chartered the vessel and arranged the shipment.
Alexander Bogomolov, director of the Association of Middle Eastern Studies in Kyiv, said that Soschenko and Mazurenko were �tools� in an international trading scheme.
The real criminals, he said, are the murky figures who bought and sold the fuel the Ukrainians were transporting. He said that the two Ukrainian sailors were tried and convicted to show the Iraqi people that progress is being made in the rebuilding of their country.
�It looks like the coalition was trying to make a show,� Bogomolov said on Dec. 2. He said he is in touch with locals who have firsthand knowledge of the Ukrainian sailors� plight.
�As I understand it, they were hired to transport a shipment, as they had done many times in the past,� said Bogomolov. �Their papers, however, were signed by a military commander in the [Saddam Hussein] regime.�
That signature, said Bogomolov, is what got them into their current mess.
�I don�t like this situation,� he said, expressing sympathy for the two men. �I believe that this could have turned out quite differently, with better results.�
Yulia Soschenko agreed.
�[My husband] doesn�t own the tanker. He�s just a ship�s officer,� she said. �The owner is in Dubai, free from prosecution.�
Bremer said that he hoped the case would serve as an example of the good work being done by the United States and coalition forces in Iraq.
�Since the flight of the evil one, over 300 cases have been tried and the pace of judicial operations is accelerating,� Bremer said of the Central Criminal Court of Iraq. �The evildoers will face justice in honest and fair Iraqi courts with honest and fair Iraqi judges.�
Yulia Soschenko said that she hopes that her husband�s name can be cleared by the court of appeals so that she and her husband can spend their silver anniversary together next year.
�It�s hard,� she said, weeping. �It hurts. I want him to be with me. I see him every day in my thoughts.�
�I want one thing � that my husband should return home as quickly as possible. That�s my one wish,� she said.
Al-Zubaidi said he wanted the same from the appeals court later this month.
�Tell Mrs. Soschenko that before their next anniversary, Mr. Soschenko can be with her,� he said. �I hope.�