By ERIC TUCKER and MATTHEW LEE
WASHINGTON (AP) — Russia and the United States have carried out a dramatic prisoner change, buying and selling a Marine veteran jailed in Moscow for a convicted Russian drug trafficker serving an extended jail sentence in America, each international locations introduced Wednesday.
The shock deal involving Trevor Reed, an American jailed for almost three years, would have been a notable diplomatic maneuver even in occasions of peace, however it was all of the extra extraordinary as a result of it was accomplished as Russia’s struggle with Ukraine has pushed relations with the U.S. to their lowest level in many years.
“Today, our prayers have been answered and Trevor is on his way back safely to the United States,” Reed’s household mentioned in an announcement.
President Joe Biden, who met in Washington with Reed’s dad and mom final month, trumpeted Reed’s launch and famous with out elaboration that “the negotiations that allowed us to bring Trevor home required difficult decisions that I do not take lightly.” The Russian international ministry described the change because the “result of a long negotiation process.”
Multiple different Americans nonetheless stay jailed in Russia, together with WNBA star Brittney Griner and Michigan company safety government Paul Whelan.
Reed, a former Marine from Texas, was arrested in the summertime of 2019 after Russian authorities mentioned he assaulted an officer whereas being pushed by police to a police station following an evening of heavy consuming. He was later sentenced to 9 years in jail, although his household has maintained his innocence and the U.S. authorities described him as unjustly detained and expressed concern about his declining well being.
The U.S. agreed to return Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot serving a 20-year federal jail sentence in Connecticut for conspiracy to smuggle cocaine into the U.S. after he was arrested in Liberia in 2010 and extradited to the U.S.
Russia had sought Yaroshenko’s return for years whereas additionally rejecting entreaties by high-level U.S. officers to launch Reed, who was nearing his 1,000th day in custody and whose well being had just lately been worsening, based on his household.
A senior U.S. official, who was not licensed to debate the matter by title and spoke to The Associated Press on the situation of anonymity, described Reed’s case as one in all “utmost priority” for the Biden administration, together with due to his well being, which his household has mentioned included a tuberculosis analysis.
“It was a difficult decision but one that we thought was worth it,” the official mentioned.
The two prisoners had been swapped in a European nation. Though officers wouldn’t say the place the switch occurred, within the hours earlier than it occurred business flight trackers recognized a airplane belonging to Russia’s federal safety service as flying to Ankara, Turkey. The U.S. Bureau of Prisons additionally up to date its web site in a single day to replicate that Yaroshenko was now not in custody.
Reed was en route again to the U.S., touring with Roger Cartsens, the U.S. authorities’s particular presidential envoy for hostage affairs.
The prisoner swap marks the highest-profile launch throughout the Biden administration of an American deemed wrongly detained overseas and comes whilst households of detainees who’ve met over the past yr with administration officers had described them as cool to the thought of an change.
The U.S. authorities doesn’t usually embrace such exchanges for worry that it’d encourage international governments to take further Americans as prisoners as a technique to extract concessions and to keep away from a possible false equivalency between an unjustly detained American — which U.S. officers consider Reed was — and a correctly convicted prison.
In this case, although, the U.S. official mentioned the deal made sense partially as a result of Yaroshenko had already served an extended portion of his jail sentence, which has now been commuted.
The Reed household thanked Biden “for making the decision to bring Trevor home” in addition to different administration officers and Bill Richardson, the previous U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, whom the household mentioned traveled to Moscow within the hours earlier than the Ukraine struggle started in hopes of securing Reed’s launch.
The Reed household had additionally been working with a advisor, Jonathan Franks, who has been concerned in different current high-profile releases, together with the case of Michael White, a Navy veteran free of Iran in 2020.
The launch had no rapid impression on the circumstances of different Americans held by Russia. Those embrace Griner, who was detained in February after authorities mentioned a search of her bag revealed a hashish by-product, and Whelan, who’s being held on espionage-related expenses his household says are bogus.
U.S. officers have described Whelan as unjustly detained, and Biden mentioned Wednesday that “we won’t stop until Paul Whelan and others join Trevor in the loving arms of family and friends.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”