The Fourth General Jurisdiction Court of Appeal has upheld on Monday the decision of Republic of Mordovia’s Supreme Court not to review the appeal of former US marine Paul Whelan who’s jailed in Russia for espionage.
During hearings on a petition for Whelan’s extradition, the prosecutor told the Nizhny Novgorod court that aa an intelligence officer of the US Department of State, Whelan tried to obtain data on students attending a university that belongs to the Federal Security Service (FSB), but was detained by federal security agents.
Judge Nikolai Volkov announced it was leaving the Mordovian Supreme Court decision “unchanged.”
FSB arrested Whelan – who holds US, Canadian, British, and Irish passports – in December 2018 in Moscow on espionage charges under Article 276 of the Russian Criminal Code. After finding him guilty, the Moscow City Court sentenced him in May 2020 to 16 years in a high-security colony.
Whelan‘s defense lawyers requested that he be handed over to the US to serve out in his home country the rest of his prison term on espionage charges that he claims are fake. Immediately after the decision was announced, they stressed that they would appeal the ruling they called is a move to “evade the implementation of justice” for their client.
The Moscow City Court has previously refused to review Whelan’s defense’ appeal based on Article 470 of Russia’s Criminal Procedure Code and on the Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons which provides for such an opportunity and passed it on to a court in Mordovia claiming jurisdictional issues.
Mordovia’s Supreme Court returned in September Whelan’s request back to the Justice Ministry to obtain the necessary information in accordance with clauses of an international agreement of the Russian Federation, as well as for “preliminary coordination of the issue with a competent organ of the United States.”
Whelan’s attorney Vladimir Zherebenkov stressed that during his clients’ imprisonment in Russia a number of his rights are being violated, like having no access to English-language media or not receiving his military pension.
Zherebenkov said that his team decided to continue to seek deportation through other channels after negotiations between Washington and Moscow to try to agree his release – including about a possible exchange, extradition or pardon- failed.
Even the discussion of exchanging Whelan for a Russian incarcerated in the US had stalled, Zherebenkov noted, after several reports of a possible swap involving Whelan and US Marine, Trevor Reed- another American imprisoned in Russia – and two Russians who are serving lengthy sentences in US prisons: arms dealer Viktor Bout and drug smuggler Konstantin Yaroshenko.
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