Russian President Vladimir Putin indicated on Friday that he'd be willing to talk about a potential 'prisoner swap' between เกม xo two former U.S. Marines, Trevor Reed and Paul Whelan, for Russians being held in the U.S.
Reed, a 29-year-old from Texas, fell into the hands of Russian police after a party in Moscow in the summer of 2019 while visiting his girlfriend. He was initially taken to a police station to sober up but after agents from Russia's FSB intelligence service arrived to question him, he was abruptly charged with assaulting two police officers, his family said. He was sentenced to nine years in prison last July in a trial that was denounced as absurd by the U.S. embassy in Moscow.
"In any real court system in the world, there's no way he would have been convicted," said his father, Joey Reed.
During the court hearings, the two police officers struggled to recall the alleged incident and contradicted themselves so much that at one stage in a session, attended by, even the judge began to laugh at them.
The U.S. has called for Reed to be released, saying his conviction was patently ridiculous.
"This conviction, and a sentence of nine years, for an alleged crime that so obviously did not occur, is ridiculous. I cannot even say 'miscarriage of justice,' because clearly 'justice' was not even considered. This was theater of the absurd," Ambassador John J. Sullivan said in a July 2020 statement.
After his son's arrest, Joey Reed took matters into his own hands and spent over a year in Russia trying to free him, staying alone in Moscow through most of the coronavirus pandemic. Paula Reed told “World News Tonight” on Monday that her husband's work has been tireless.