A banner calls for “Free Trevor Reed” on March 30, 2022 in front of the White House in Washington. afp_tickers
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–This content was published on April 27, 2022 – 15:22
(AFP)
Former US Marine Trevor Reed, sentenced to nine years in prison in Russia for violence, was swapped Wednesday for a Russian pilot jailed in the US since 2010, a prisoner swap reminiscent of those carried out during the Cold War.
“On April 27, after a long negotiation process, Trevor Reed (…) was exchanged for the Russian citizen Konstantin Yaroshenko, sentenced to 20 years in prison by a US court in 2010,” the Russian Ministry spokeswoman said. of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zajárova, on the Telegram social network.
The president of the United States, Joe Biden, confirmed the exchange and assured that the negotiations to achieve Reed’s release required making “difficult decisions”.
“His safe return is a testament to the priority my administration places on bringing home Americans held hostage and wrongfully detained abroad,” Trump said.
Russian television broadcast images of Trevor Reed, dressed in black and carrying a large bag, as he boarded a plane.
His father, Joey Reed, told CNN that the former soldier had been transferred to Moscow this week and then boarded a plane for Turkey.
Reed, 30, was sentenced in July 2020 to nine years in prison for assaulting two policemen during a party in Moscow in August 2019, while drunk.
The former soldier denied the aggression and denounced a “political” trial in a context of high tensions between Moscow and Washington.
Konstantin Yaroshenko, on the other hand, was arrested in May 2010 in Liberia by US secret service agents. Accused of drug trafficking related to the FARC in Colombia, the authorities took him to the United States, where the justice sentenced him to 20 years in prison.
According to the Interfax agency, a plane from Ankara with Yaroshenko landed around 12:30 GMT in Sochi, a Russian seaside resort on the Black Sea.
The prisoner swap between the United States and Russia has “no” impact on relations between the two countries, stressed a US official.
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Detained in a penal colony in Mordovia, 500 km from Moscow, Reed had started a hunger strike in November 2021 to protest against his conditions of detention.
His lawyer, Sergei Nikitenkov, claimed that he had been held in solitary confinement several times and that the prison administration did not hand over the letters he received.
Yaroshenko’s Russian lawyer, Alexei Tarassov, called his release an “Easter miracle” and recalled that the swap had been in the works “for a long time.”
Biden had vowed to do everything he could to free Trevor Reed and other Americans “wrongly detained” in Russia. The hypothesis of a prisoner exchange had been mentioned several times, for example during the meeting between Putin and Biden in Geneva in June 2021.
Prisoner swaps were frequent between Moscow and Western countries until the end of the Cold War in 1991.
In most cases, they concern spies.
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