Reed’s family issued a statement confirming his release, saying “her prayers have been answered and Trevor is returning safely to the United States.” The White House issued a statement in which President Joe Biden said he had informed the family of Reed’s release. “We welcome Trevor Reed home and celebrate his return to the much-missed family,” Biden said in a statement. “I heard in the voices of Trevor’s parents how much they were worried about his health and they missed his presence. And I was glad to be able to share with them the good news about Trevor’s freedom.” Paula Reed, the mother of former US Marine Trevor Reed, who was sentenced to nine years in prison in Russia, speaks at a press conference outside the US Capitol to demand his release, September 16, 2020. Tom Williams / CQ -Roll Call, Inc./Getty Mr Biden thanked the President’s Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs, Roger Carstens, and the US Ambassador to Russia, John Sullivan, for their “tireless and dedicated work” to secure Reed’s release. The president said the negotiations “require difficult decisions” which he “did not take lightly” and promised that his government would continue to work to get another former US Marine, Paul Whelan, and professional basketball player Brittney Griner out of Russian prisons. . . Whelan has been in jail since 2018, serving a 16-year sentence for espionage charges the U.S. and his family say are fabricated. Greiner has been detained in Russia since mid-February on drug charges.
A U.S. official has told CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan’s foreign affairs correspondent and coordinator on Wednesday that the exchange of detainees on Wednesday “is not a sign of a broader diplomatic engagement with Russia in the wake of the Ukraine war.”
The Associated Press reported that the exchange of detainees took place in a European country on Wednesday, with flight surveillance services showing a Russian prison aircraft landing in the Turkish capital, Ankara, earlier in the day. The Associated Press reports that the U.S. Bureau of Investigation updated its website overnight to reflect that Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot convicted of smuggling cocaine into the United States in 2010 and sentenced to 20 years in prison, was no longer behind bars. Yaroshenko’s lawyer, Alexei Tarasov, told Russia’s Interfax news agency that his client was “now on his way home”. Reed was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2020 after being convicted of assaulting two Russian police officers. He always claimed that he did not remember the incident and declared his innocence. The U.S. government has expressed concern about the law of his trial. Ex-Marine’s parents beg for release from Russian prison 04:55 Just two weeks ago, a Russian court rejected Reed’s legal appeal against his conviction and prison sentence and sent the case to a lower court. The decision was mourned by US Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan, who said at the time that Reed “remains in prison for a crime he did not commit”. Reed’s family has expressed serious concerns about his health, saying he believes he had tuberculosis in prison and was not receiving proper medical treatment, despite the fact that the Russian Penitentiary Service said earlier in April that he had been taken to a prison hospital. In a statement released on April 11, Reed’s parents said they had been able to “restore indirect contact” with their son after not hearing from him for nearly a week.

Tucker Reals

Tucker Reals is the foreign editor of CBSNews.com, based in CBS News, London.