Will Paul Whelen be released on prisoner exchange
2022.12.16 12:23
Will Paul Whelen be released on prisoner exchange
Budrigannews.com – Despite months of speculation, Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine serving a 16-year sentence on espionage charges in a Russian penal colony, did not participate in a prisoner exchange on Thursday with American basketball star Brittney Griner.
Whelan’s facts include the following:
On December 28, 2018, Whelan was taken into custody by FSB agents in a room at the Metropol Hotel in Moscow, close to the Kremlin.
Examiners said he was a government operative for military knowledge with a position of colonel or higher, and had been discovered in the act with a PC streak drive containing grouped data.
Whelan claimed that he had been in Russia for a friend’s wedding and that a Russian friend had given him the drive in a sting. He stated that he had assumed it contained vacation photos.
Whelan, now 52, was found guilty of spying in 2020 and given a 16-year sentence to a maximum-security prison following a trial that was conducted entirely behind closed doors and was criticized by U.S. diplomats for being unfair and opaque. He is currently being held in the Mordovia region, east of Moscow, in the IK-17 penal colony.
Whelan was born in Ottawa, Canada, to British and Irish parents. He later moved to Novi, Michigan, where he now lives. He is a citizen of all four countries.
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From 2003 to 2008, Whelan was a member of the Marine Corps Reserve and worked primarily as an administrative clerk in Iraq. After it was discovered that he had attempted to steal $10,000, he received a bad-conduct discharge at the conclusion of that time for larceny and other lesser offenses.
Whelan was the head of global security for BorgWarner (NYSE:) at the time of his arrest. a supplier of auto parts in Michigan.
A Russian court denied his request to serve his sentence in the United States in November of last year.
