On July 30, 2020, Trevor Reed, a former US Marine, was sentenced by a Moscow court to serve a nine-year jail term in Russia. The 30-year-old Texan was arrested and convicted on various charges, including assaulting two prison officers. The verdict received nationwide attention, with Texas Republicans criticizing the Biden Administration for not doing more to help the Reed family bring their kin home.
What was Trevor Reed doing in Russia, and why was he detained? Here’s the lowdown on the Trevor Reed story.
Why Was Trevor Reed Detained
In the summer of 2019, Trevor Reed made a trip to Russia with his then-girlfriend to learn the language. Following a drunken party in the nation’s capital, Moscow, Reed was arrested by law enforcement officers on intoxication charges in August of the same year and thrown in jail to sober up.
However, upon questioning by Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) agents, the charges were escalated to violently assaulting two officers at the time of his arrest, charges that he vehemently denied.
According to Reed’s family, the charges against him were completely fabricated, and no evidence was presented to support them. The US administration has repeatedly expressed concerns that American ex-servicemen detained abroad may have been targeted for political reasons.
In July 2020, 11 months after his arrest, Reed was found guilty of the charges brought against him. He was sentenced to serve nine years behind bars in a Mordovia prison, 352 miles from Moscow. John J. Sullivan, the United States ambassador to Moscow, termed the conviction “absurd.” He stated that a nine-year jail term for a crime that “obviously did not occur” was “ridiculous.”
Trevor Reed and Paul Whelan
Reed’s arrest and subsequent conviction have drawn comparisons to the case of Paul Nicholas Whelan, another ex-Marine who suffered a similar fate.
Whelan, a 52-year-old US Marine veteran, was arrested in December 2018 by the FSB on spying charges. He had traveled to the country to attend a friend’s wedding. The Michigan native was held for one and a half years in Moscow’s Lefortovo jail during the trial before being found guilty of espionage. He was sentenced to serve a 16-year jail sentence in a maximum-security prison facility with the possibility of time in a labor camp.
Whelan maintained his innocence and accused Russia of fabricating the charges against him. He stated that it was an intricate ploy to use him as a bargaining chip in the country’s diplomatic relations with the US.
Mike Pompeo, the then US Secretary of State in the Trump administration, denounced Whelan’s conviction, accusing Russia of denying him a fair hearing before an impartial and independent tribunal. Russian authorities classified the case “top-secret,” and no details of the charges brought against him were ever publicly disclosed.
Whelan’s defense stated that he was the victim of a crude set-up by the FSB, who used his long-time friend, Ilya Yatsenko, to frame him. His lawyers claim that the friend, who was an FSB officer, visited him in his hotel room in December 2018 and planted the classified materials, which officers found in his possession at the time of his arrest.
Whelan believed that his friend was bringing him a memory card containing photos they had taken together during an excursion to a monastery town earlier that year. Unbeknownst to him, the memory card contained classified materials. At the time of his arrest, there had been a lot of speculation that Russia would use Whelan in a possible exchange for Russian prisoners held in the US. This, however, was not the case.
Trevor Reed Prisoner Exchange
On the week of March 28, 2022, Reed went on a hunger strike protesting his ill-treatment in a Russian prison. He stated that he was not receiving treatment for possible tuberculosis. Instead, he was placed in solitary confinement as punishment. His family alleges that he was sent to the prison medical facility but did not receive meaningful medical attention to treat his condition.
Russian authorities released a statement claiming that Reed’s allegations are false and were part of a scheme to get Western media to give them bad press in light of the recent goings-on in Ukraine.
On April 27, 2022, following months of lengthy negotiations led by President Biden, Reed was released in a prisoner swap in exchange for US-jailed Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko. Yaroshenko was convicted in 2011 on charges of conspiring to import cocaine worth more than $100 million into the US. He was sentenced to 20 years behind bars and was doing time in a Connecticut correctional facility.
Before his eventual conviction, Yaroshenko had been captured by US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agents in Liberia in a dramatic undercover operation on May 28, 2010.
Over the last several decades, the US government has periodically been involved in prisoner swaps with Russia and what was the former Soviet Union. With Russia’s continued invasion of Ukraine, the Reed-Yaroshenko exchange came at a time when tensions between the two countries had been at an all-time high since the Cold War.
Why Was Paul Whelan Left Behind
While Whelan expressed his happiness about Reed’s release, he questioned why he was left behind. In a statement made through his parents, Whelan reiterated that the US administration was aware that his charges were fabricated and is wondering why more has not been done to secure his release.
He is concerned that with the recent Reed-Yaroshenko prisoner swap, the US may not have as many concessions to make. His family, through a statement by Paul’s brother, David Whelan, says they are not clear on their next steps.
President Biden did, however, assure the Whelan family of his administration’s commitment to bring Paul back home.
The US has also called on Russia to release Brittney Griner, a WNBA star who was arrested in February on drug-related charges. Paul and Brittney are among dozens of US nationals who are arbitrarily detained by sovereign states in different parts of the world.
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