Former US Marine Paul Whelan is among the individuals included today in the prisoner exchange between Russia, the United States, Germany and Slovenia, world agencies reported.
He was detained by agents of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) on December 28, 2018, at the Moscow Metropol Hotel on espionage charges, Reuters recalled.
Over the next six years, Russian authorities refused to release him in several prisoner exchanges, including the one in 2022, when basketball player Brittany Griner was returned to her homeland.
US authorities said that Whelan, 54, who was sentenced to 16 years in prison in a penal colony, was “unfairly detained“ by Russian agents and became their target only because he is an American citizen.
His case was taken to the highest level of the US government, and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken emphasized that Whelan was being brought up on “false espionage charges” and reported that he was being treated differently by Moscow than other prisoners to increase the suffering of his family.
Whelan also denied being a spy and explained that the flash drive that was found on him and cited as evidence of his espionage activities by Russian authorities contained photos from his vacation in Russia, where he was arriving for a friend's wedding.
After a closed-door trial that US diplomats said was unfair and opaque, Whelan was sentenced to 16 years in solitary confinement for espionage in 2020. He was taken to the IK-17 penal colony in the Mordovia region, east of Moscow.
While in prison, he was attacked by another prisoner who punched him in the face and forced him to defend himself. In November last year, a Moscow court rejected his request to be transferred to serve his sentence in a US prison.
In December, Whelan told the BBC that American offers to release him were like "throwing spaghetti at a wall to see which one sticks" and called them a "serious betrayal". "The problem is, my life is running out while they're doing this," he told the network.
Weeks before his release, he told CNN that he hoped President Joe Biden would treat his case like his own son being held in prison.
He did, however, express gratitude to the U.S. government for working to secure his release, and his family supported the deal for Griner's return, though he called for more action on Whelan's case.