Russia has freed former Marine Trevor Reed in a prisoner swap with the United States, his family and officials said Wednesday.
“Today, our prayers have been answered and Trevor is safely back in the United States,” Joey, Paula and Taylor Reed said in a statement.
They said Reed will “tell his own story” when he’s ready before asking for privacy to address “the myriad of health issues brought on by the miserable conditions he was subjected to in his Russian gulag.”
The dramatic exchange between Russia and the United States unfolded on Wednesday, exchanging Reed, who was jailed in Moscow, for convicted Russian drug lord Konstantin Yaroshenko, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2010.
The swap took place “as a result of a long negotiation process,” Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said on her verified Telegram channel.
The surprise deal would have been a remarkable diplomatic maneuver even in peacetime, but it was all the more extraordinary because it was done as Russia’s war with Ukraine it has brought relations with the United States to their lowest point in decades.
President Joe Biden said in a statement Wednesday morning: “Today, we welcome home Trevor Reed and celebrate his return to the family who missed him so much.”
Biden noted that it was no easy effort to bring Reed home.
“The negotiations that allowed us to bring Trevor home required difficult decisions that I do not take lightly,” he said. “Her safe return of him is a testament to the priority my Administration places on bringing home Americans held hostage and wrongfully detained abroad.”
Biden praised the work of Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens and US Ambassador to the Russian Federation John Sullivan for their work in helping Reed return.
cane was arrested in the summer of 2019 after Russian authorities say he assaulted an officer as police were driving him to a police station after a night of heavy drinking. Reed was later sentenced to nine years in prison, although his family has maintained his innocence and the US government has described him as unfairly detained.
Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot, was arrested in Liberia in 2010 and extradited to the United States before finally being convicted of conspiracy to smuggle cocaine.
Russia had sought his return for years while rejecting pleas from high-level US officials to free Reed, who was approaching his 1,000th day in custody and whose health had recently worsened, according to his family.
The two prisoners were exchanged in a European country. Although officials did not say where the transfer took place, in the hours before it happened, commercial flight trackers identified a plane belonging to Russia’s federal security service flying to Ankara, Turkey. The US Bureau of Prisons also updated its website overnight to reflect that Yaroshenko was no longer in custody.
The prisoner swap marks the highest-profile release during the Biden administration of an American considered wrongfully detained abroad and comes even as families of detainees who have met with administration officials over the past year have described them as indifferent to the idea of an exchange.
In their statement, the Reed family thanked President Joe Biden “for making the decision to bring Trevor home,” as well as other administration officials and Bill Richardson, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, who according to the family traveled to Moscow hours before. the ukrainian war started hoping to secure Reed’s release.
Reed was one of several Americans Russia retained, including WNBA star Brittney Griner, who was arrested in February after authorities said a search of her bag revealed a cannabis derivative, and Michigan corporate security executive Paul Whelan who is being held on charges related to espionage his family says they are fake. It was unclear what impact Wednesday’s action might have on their cases.
parents network got a rare private meeting with Biden and administration officials last month. Weeks earlier they had stood along his motorcade route during a presidential visit to Texas in hopes of attracting his attention, then demonstrated outside the White House to ask for a meeting.
Reference-www.nbcnews.com