President Trump needs to be more “aggressive” in pressuring Russia to release detained American citizen Paul Whelan, said an American lawyer who is working on the case.
“This is an arrest by a foreign intelligence service for the purpose of extracting a benefit,” lawyer Ryan Fayhee told the Washington Examiner. “There need to be demands from the White House to return Paul.”
Whelan, a Michigan resident, and former Marine, was seized by the FSB in December and accused of espionage. Russian officials have extended his pre-trial detention repeatedly while refusing to honor due process, or to grant proper access to State Department officials, Fayhee said. The U.S. government, meanwhile, is being too passive about securing Whalen’s release, the lawyer said.
“This ought to be scary stuff for any American citizen traveling to Russia,” said Fayhee, a former Justice Department prosecutor who is working on the case pro bono. “If an American citizen is going to be arrested and treated in this way with such a fundamental lack of due process … there has to be a response other than a really angry letter or statement.”
The U.S. State Department did not designate Whalen as a “wrongful detainee,” and therefore did not offer help from its hostage negotiation team, said Whelan’s twin brother, David.
“That was frustrating,” David Whelan told the Washington Examiner. “Their failure to designate him as a wrongful detainee appears to have been purposeful for strategic or other reasons that they thought would actually benefit Paul rather than hurt him.”
The State Department, while affirming the Whelan family’s criticism of the Russian government’s handling of the situation, did not explain why his case does not warrant a “wrongful detainee” designation. As such, the U.S. government’s Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell, which brings to bear an array of government entities, cannot help.
“We have repeatedly raised our concerns regarding the lack of evidence that has been presented in Mr. Whelan’s case,” a State Department spokeswoman told the Washington Examiner, adding the administration supports congressional resolutions calling for his release. “We continue to urge the Russian government to ensure a fair trial, including a fair and public hearing without undue delay, in accordance with its international legal obligations.”
The decision to treat the case like any other incident involving an American charged overseas places the federal government in the position of “being deferential to [the Russian judiciary’s] so-called process” when American observers agree that “there is no process,” Fayhee said. Instead, he suggested, the Trump team should employ punitive measures, such as Global Magnitsky Act human rights sanctions to punish the Russian officials involved in his case.
“Our government ought to take a more aggressive tone to tell them … what the consequences are going to be if they arrest without evidence and without process American citizens,” Fayhee said.
