A former Marine imprisoned in Russia is being subjected to sleep deprivation tactics as his case languishes through a coronavirus pandemic and election season that has dominated the attention of U.S. leaders, according to his family.
“The election really is just the latest one,” David Whelan, whose twin brother Paul was seized by Russian authorities in December 2018, told the Washington Examiner. “And the transition, whether it is to a second Trump administration or to a first Biden administration, just gives us the challenge of, we may have a lot of faces changing.”
Paul Whelan was given a 16-year sentence on espionage charges that stem from evidence planted on him by a “former friend” and Russian intelligence agency employee who owed him $1,400, according to his advocates. He is being held at a Siberian labor camp established as part of the Soviet gulag network and has been labeled a flight risk by prison authorities — even though “one does not simply walk out of Mordovia,” as his brother put it earlier Thursday in an email to journalists and activists. U.S. Embassy officials in Moscow have protested on his behalf, but his family doesn’t expect any relief in the near future.
“We’re really waiting to see what happens with the American administration, because if the Trump administration is now in its last three months, then, we obviously have some concern about related to Paul being carried forward,” David Whelan said. “It’s a matter of keeping people’s attention, very difficult time.”
David Whelan takes care to praise the advocacy efforts of the consular officials in Moscow, but he made clear the family’s frustration has grown during the campaign season over a perceived lack of attention from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other senior Trump administration officials.
“It was very frustrating to see Secretary Pompeo campaigning, flying to Wisconsin and flying to other places like that,” Whelan said, in reference to a September trip to Milwaukee.
Pompeo has defended his domestic travel as official department business; the Wisconsin trip, for instance, focused on a warning to state lawmakers about Chinese Communist Party influence operations targeting state officials. Yet the political battleground setting was impossible for David Whelan to overlook.
“If you have enough time to go electioneering, then you really should have been making time to go and make outreach to the Russian Federation, or to the Venezuelan government or to the other countries where there are American citizens being held,” he said.
Whelan can foresee potential advantages and disadvantages for securing his brother’s release next year. If President Trump wins a second term, he suggests, “some of the restraints or caution they may have had towards the Russian Federation might melt away” and allow for more productive negotiations. And an administration led by Joe Biden might have more political appointees confirmed than Trump has so far, allowing there to be “more hands available to do the work in the future.”
The one thing that seems certain to David Whelan is that his brother will have to wait until after Inauguration Day for any major assistance. “I would be very surprised to see any sort of resolution in Paul’s case before Jan. 20,” he said.
