After spending more than three years in detention, police officer Alexandru Ursu was freed today through a pardon decree by Transnistrian leader Yevgeni Shevchuk. According to the human rights group Promo-LEX, he is now at home with his family in Hagimus village Causeni district, Info-Prim Neo reports. Alexandru Ursu, an investigator at the Hagimus police station, was imprisoned on charges of falsifying documents and using fraud to by an apartment in Bender. Promo-LEX said the trial against him was merely formal and feigned, as a result of which he got sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment. On 11 April 2011, Promo-LEX lodged an application with the European Court of Human Rights. Ursu was detained for 3 years and 4 months at Prison no.1 in Hlinaia, Grigoriopol district. Promo-LEX says that nearly 2,800 persons are being held illegally in the prisons on the eastern side of the Nistru. Some of them have turned to the ECHR for help.