"America acquired me out however they left [Paul Whelan] there," Trevor Reed mentioned.
ABC Information
Newly freed Trevor Reed emotionally accused President Biden’s administration of unfairly leaving one other Marine veteran behind in a Moscow jail moderately than getting him out in the identical prisoner swap.
“I assumed after I discovered that it was an alternate that was taking place that that they had most likely exchanged Paul Whelan as nicely,” Reed, 30, instructed “Good Morning America” of the guy veteran who has been held for greater than three years in Moscow on trumped-up espionage prices.
“I assumed that — that that was fallacious. That they acquired me out and never Paul,” he mentioned, twice saying “sorry” as he paused to manage his feelings within the interview that aired Monday.
“America acquired me out however they left him there. I can’t describe to you the way painful that feeling is,” he continued.
Reed, who was freed late final month in alternate for a infamous Russian drug trafficker, vowed to now “do every part I may to get him out of there.”
Whelan, 52 — who's serving a 16-year sentence — had shared the same message to his household when studying that Reed was being freed in a prisoner swap.
“Why was I left behind?” he requested. “Why hasn’t extra been executed to safe my launch?”
Reed insisted that he must be swapped for Russian arms vendor Viktor Bout, whom the Kremlin has floated as a attainable alternate for Whelan or Brittney Griner, the US ladies’s basketball participant held in Moscow since February, in response to this system.
“Completely. Viktor Bout has already been in jail for 15 years,” he mentioned.
“I don’t care if it’s 100 Viktor Bouts. They must get our guys out,” he mentioned.
Reed nonetheless finds it laborious to imagine he's again within the US and never within the Russian cell that he beforehand instructed CNN was coated in feces and the blood of different inmates who had been attacked and even killed.
“I bear in mind pondering like is that this actual, you realize you’re pondering perhaps this isn't taking place. Perhaps I’m nonetheless gonna get up proper now in solitary confinement,” he mentioned of his freedom.
His mom, Paula Reed, recalled to “GMA” the second she lastly noticed him once more.
“I mentioned, ‘I like you — so glad you’re house.’ Gave him a kiss and a hug — a protracted, lengthy hug,” she mentioned.
His dad, Joey, joked about how they might be overwhelming him with consideration, joking that their son might quickly say, “Oh my God — put my again in jail!”
Reed had been behind bars since 2019, serving a nine-year sentence on prices he assaulted two cops in Moscow, who have been driving him to a police station after a celebration the place he reportedly acquired blackout drunk.
He claimed that one of many arresting officers had signaled to him that they have been made to press trumped-up prices by unspecified authorities.
The US ambassador to Moscow, John Sullivan, on the time known as it “ridiculous” that Reed was imprisoned “for an alleged crime that so clearly didn't happen.”
“This was theater of the absurd,” he mentioned of Reed’s trial.
US officers additionally denounced Whelan’s trial as unfair. In his current assertion to his household, the Marine veteran mentioned that he has “been held on a fictitious cost of espionage for 40 months” and that “the world is aware of this cost was fabricated.”
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