Russia has released American military veteran Robert Gilman after more than four years of imprisonment on disputed charges, following reports that he was gravely ill and at risk of dying.
The 32-year-old Gilman, a teacher and former U.S. Marine who had been detained since 2022, was en route to a U.S. military hospital in Texas for medical and psychological evaluation and treatment, an activist who worked to secure his freedom told the Associated Press.
Eric Lebson, chief strategy officer of Global Reach, which advocated on his behalf and that of other Americans detained abroad, said Gilman’s family, including his mother, who had traveled to Russia in hopes of seeing him at the hospital there, has flown to Texas to be with him.
Gilman was originally sentenced to 3 1/2 years in 2022 after being convicted of beating a police officer following an incident on a train. Additional convictions followed, including charges of attacking a prison inspector, an investigator and a guard, leading to a sentence of eight years and one month in October 2024. That sentence was later extended to 10 years after he was found guilty of assaulting prison guards.
According to Lebson, Gilman spent 47 days in “a dissociative stupor” due to abuse he suffered in custody before being moved from prison to a civilian hospital, where he was placed on a feeding tube and handcuffed to a bed. Hospital reports described his condition as “dire and life-threatening,” prompting the U.S. government to act and resulting in what Lebson called “a unilateral humanitarian release” by Russian authorities.
Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA) had publicly urged Russia and the U.S. to cooperate on securing Gilman’s release. He was among at least eight Americans who remained in Russian custody following a series of high-profile prisoner exchanges between the two countries in recent years.
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