Jailed US Ex-Marine Trevor Reed Transferred To Penal Colony In Russia’s Mordovia

This article was originally published July 16, 2021, by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. 

Jailed former U.S. marine Trevor Reed has been transferred to a penal colony in Mordovia, a region about 350 kilometers east of Moscow historically known as the location of Russia’s toughest prisons, including Soviet-era labor camps for political prisoners.

Aleksei Melnikov, the executive secretary of the Public Monitoring Commission human rights group, said on July 16 that “Trevor had been transferred from detention center No. 5 in Moscow to one of the penal colonies in Mordovia.”

Reed, who is from Texas, was sentenced to nine years in prison in late July last year. He was arrested in 2019 and charged with assaulting two Russian police officers. The U.S. government and Reed deny the allegations and questioned the fairness of the judicial proceedings.

Reed is one of several American citizens to face trial in Russia in recent years on charges that their families, supporters, and in some cases the U.S. government, have said appear trumped up.

Another former U.S. Marine, 50-year-old Paul Whelan, was sentenced by a court in Moscow to 16 years in prison in May 2020 on espionage charges condemned by the United States as a “mockery of justice.”

Whelan is currently serving his prison term in a penal colony in Mordovia as well.

The United States has been pushing Russia to release Whelan and Reed.

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