Marc Fogel, an American teacher serving a 14-year prison sentence in Russia, has been designated by the U.S. government as wrongfully detained, the State Department said on Friday.
Mr. Fogel, a former worker at the United States Embassy in Moscow, was arrested in Russia in August 2021 and convicted of drug smuggling. He was sentenced in June 2022 by the same court that handled the case of Brittney Griner, the American basketball star who was also sentenced to prison after pleading guilty to drug charges. The White House negotiated on behalf of Ms. Griner and eventually struck a prisoner swap deal in which she was released in December 2022 in exchange for the convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout.
Mr. Fogel, by contrast, has remained imprisoned in Russia, serving his sentence in a high-security penal colony.
A State Department statement on Friday said that “the United States has been working to secure Marc Fogel’s release for some time.” But Mr. Fogel was not included in the prisoner swap in August that secured the release of the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.
“We have long called for his humanitarian release and tried to include him in the Aug. 1 deal, but were unable to,” the statement said. It added that Mr. Fogel had been designated in October as “wrongfully detained.” It was unclear why the department had waited until this week to announce the change in classification.
The designation moves Mr. Fogel’s case to the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs within the State Department. The office focuses on the release of hostages who are found to have been wrongfully detained. The designation means that the State Department has credible information that the person is innocent, or possibly was detained for the primary purpose of influencing U.S. policy.
“We are grateful that, after three excruciatingly long years, the State Department has finally acknowledged what we have known all along — that our husband and father, Marc Fogel, has and continues to be wrongfully detained,” Mr. Fogel’s family said in a statement. “Now that we have the full force of the U.S. government behind us, we must do everything in our power to bring Marc home as quickly and safely as possible.”
Mr. Fogel’s lawyer, Martin De Luca, called the State Department designation “long overdue.” Mr. De Luca said his client “was left behind in three major prisoner swaps, enduring unimaginable hardship while others were brought home.”
Mr. Fogel worked at the Anglo-American School of Moscow and was arrested in August 2021 when customs officers at Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow found marijuana in his luggage after he arrived from New York. The cannabis, according to a statement from the Russian Interior Ministry, had been packaged in a container carrying contact lenses, and cannabis oil was also found in e-cigarette cartridges.
In a statement shared by Mr. Fogel’s wife, Jane, his family said that he had been carrying less than 20 grams of marijuana, which they said had been recommended to him by a doctor in the United States to help treat a long-term, debilitating spinal condition.
Mr. Fogel pleaded guilty to charges of smuggling and illegally possessing, transporting and producing drugs, according to the family statement, which called the 14-year sentence “grossly disproportionate” compared with other Russian court cases involving similar quantities of marijuana.
Russia’s Interior Ministry has said that Mr. Fogel and his wife had diplomatic status until May 2021, and that Mr. Fogel could have used that status to open a drug-smuggling route into Moscow. Mr. Fogel’s family called those allegations “outrageous and blatantly false” and said that Mr. Fogel had “an exemplary track record as a teacher.”
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