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May 4. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The United States ambassador to Moscow, Lynne Tracy, visited the IK17 prison in Mordovia, in Russia, this Thursday, where she met with ex-marine Paul Whelan, sentenced by the Russian Justice to 16 years in prison for espionage charges.
“Paul has been unjustly detained in Russia for more than four years, and his release remains a top priority,” the US Embassy in Moscow said on its official profile on the social network Twitter.
Likewise, the diplomatic legation has stressed that the US government “will continue to involve the Russian authorities in the case” so that ex-Marine Whelan can finally “return home as soon as possible” together with his relatives.
Whelan, 50, was detained in December 2018 at a Moscow hotel by agents of the Federal Security Service. According to Russian Intelligence, he was found with an external memory device containing classified information.
However, the ex-marine maintains that the Russian authorities set him up because, according to his version, an acquaintance of Russian nationality gave him the aforementioned ‘pendrive’, which he thought contained photographs of his last vacation.
Moscow and Washington completed the exchange of two of their citizens months ago: the American basketball player Brittney Griner and the Soviet arms dealer Viktor Bout. However, Whelan was left out of this pact, which aroused discomfort among his relatives.
