American Trevor Reed, who was sentenced to nine years in a penal colony in Russia in the case of an attack on police officers in Moscow in the summer of 2019, has been transferred from the pre-trial detention center to the Mordovia colony. This was reported by the executive secretary of the Public Monitoring Commission (PMC) of Moscow, Alexey Melnikov.
Earlier, the Moscow City Court rejected the appeal of a US citizen against the verdict.
In July last year, a court in Moscow sentenced Reed to nine years in a general regime colony on charges of violence against government officials. In court, Reed said that he did not admit guilt.
The US government and Reed deny the charges and doubt the fairness of the trial. The American and his family insist that the case is politically motivated.
According to a source, the transfer of American Trevor Reed to Mordovia does not exclude the possibility of his exchange for Russian prisoners held in American prisons. He recalled that Reed appears on the list of Americans that the Federal Penitentiary Service handed over to the Russian Foreign Ministry before the meeting of the presidents of Russia and the United States on June 16 in Geneva.
Then Joe Biden said that Reed, as well as another US citizen Paul Whelan (accused of espionage), were “illegally imprisoned.” The Russian president did not rule out that the countries will exchange “prisoners.” Earlier, in an interview with NBC News, Vladimir Putin called Reed “a drunkard and a troublemaker.”
Two prisoners are being held in the United States, whose release Russia has been seeking for more than a decade. The first is the arms dealer Viktor Bout. The second is Konstantin Yaroshenko, a pilot who was found guilty of conspiracy to smuggle cocaine into the United States.
