WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday welcomed the release of American Trevor Reed from detention in Russia, where he has been held since 2019.
“Today, we welcome home Trevor Reed and celebrate his return to the family that missed him dearly. Trevor, a former U.S. Marine, is free from Russian detention,” Biden said in a statement.
Reed, 30, from Texas, is serving out his term after being convicted in 2019 of endangering the lives of two police officers while drunk on a visit to Moscow. The United States called his trial a “theatre of the absurd.”
The U.S. president said he had shared the news with Reed’s parents, Joey and Paula Reed, who have been pressing the administration to help their son.
In a statement, they thanked Biden and others involved in freeing their son, saying “our family has been living a nightmare.”
Russia’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday it had traded Trevor Reed, a former U.S. Marine held in a Russian jail, for Russian citizen Konstantin Yaroshenko, who was serving a 20-year sentence in the United States.
Biden did not comment on details of the release, except to say, “The negotiations that allowed us to bring Trevor home required difficult decisions that I do not take lightly.”
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu and Humeyra Pamuk; editing by Susan Heavey; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
