MOSCOW — Russia and the US announced a
prisoner swap Wednesday despite fierce tensions over
Ukraine, with Moscow
handing over a jailed ex-Marine in exchange for a Russian pilot convicted of
drug smuggling.
اضافة اعلان
Trevor Reed, a 30-year-old from Texas who was jailed
in Russia in 2020, was exchanged for Konstantin Yaroshenko, 53, who had been
serving a 20-year US prison sentence since 2011.
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman
Maria Zakharova said the two had been exchanged on Wednesday “as a result of a lengthy
negotiations process”.
Russian state television showed Reed — dressed all
in black and carrying a large bag — escorted onto a plane at Moscow’s Vnukovo
airport by men in military uniform.
His father Joey Reed told CNN that Trevor was moved
to a Moscow prison this week and then flown to Turkey where the swap took
place.
“The American plane pulled up next to the Russian
plane and they walked both prisoners across at the same time, like you see in
the movies,” he said.
US President Joe Biden said the swap required
“difficult decisions”.
“The negotiations that allowed us to bring Trevor
home required difficult decisions that I do not take lightly,” Biden said in a
statement.
“His safe return is a testament to the priority my
administration places on bringing home Americans held hostage and wrongfully
detained abroad,” he added.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken also praised the
swap.
“I am pleased to announce the release of US citizen
Trevor Reed, who was wrongfully detained in Russia,” Blinken said in a
statement.
“We also remain committed to securing the freedom of
all US nationals wrongfully detained abroad,” he added.
Reed was sentenced in July 2020 to nine years in
prison by a Russian court after allegedly attacking police officers while
drunk.
While being driven to a police station, he allegedly
grabbed the arm of a police officer, causing the car they were in to swerve,
and elbowed another officer in the abdomen.
Hunger strike
Reed pleaded not guilty to
the charges, saying he remembers nothing of the incident.
While imprisoned in a penal colony in Russia’s
Mordovia Republic, some 500km southeast of
Moscow, Reed staged a hunger strike
over what he said was the violation of his rights.
His lawyer Sergei Nikitenkov said at the time that
Reed was several times put in an isolation cell and prison staff were
withholding letters from him.
Nikitenkov told the Interfax news agency Wednesday
that his client did not ask for a pardon.
“He agrees with the fact of the exchange, approves
it, but at the same time Trevor does not admit his guilt,” he said.
Russian
television reported that Yaroshenko had already arrived back in the country.
He was arrested in Liberia in 2010 for drug
trafficking, then transferred to the US, where he was sentenced to 20 years in
prison in September 2011.
Yaroshenko’s lawyer Alexei Tarasov told the RIA
Novosti state news agency: “I would call this an Easter miracle,” referring to
Orthodox Easter.
He said that the swap was carried out in a third
country and “had been in the works for a very long while”.
The Russian’s health “leaves much to be desired,”
Tarasov told state news agency TASS.
In June 2021, Yaroshenko’s family sent a letter to
Biden requesting a pardon for the jailed pilot.
Yaroshenko’s wife Viktoria told RIA Novosti that her
husband was exchanged in Turkey, and she was waiting for him at a Moscow
airport.
An exchange of prisoners was on the agenda last June
during a summit meeting between Biden and Russian President
Vladimir Putin in
Geneva.
At the time, Putin hinted that Reed’s case could be
resolved quickly, calling him a “drunk and a troublemaker”.
Another US citizen, Paul Whelan, a former security
official at an auto parts company, remains in a Russian prison serving 16 years
on espionage charges.
Biden referred to his case in a statement, saying: “We won’t
stop until Paul Whelan and others join Trevor in the loving arms of family and
friends.”
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