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Marc Fogel was convicted of drug smuggling and sentenced in 2022 to 14 years in prison by the same court that handled the case of Brittney Griner.
Dec. 28, 2024, 5:58 p.m. ET
Marc Fogel, an American teacher serving a 14-year prison sentence in Russia, has been designated by the U.S. government as wrongfully detained, the State Department said on Friday.
Mr. Fogel, a former worker at the United States Embassy in Moscow, was arrested in Russia in August 2021 and convicted of drug smuggling. He was sentenced in June 2022 by the same court that handled the case of Brittney Griner, the American basketball star who was also sentenced to prison after pleading guilty to drug charges. The White House negotiated on behalf of Ms. Griner and eventually struck a prisoner swap deal in which she was released in December 2022 in exchange for the convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout.
Mr. Fogel, by contrast, has remained imprisoned in Russia, serving his sentence in a high-security penal colony.
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A State Department statement on Friday said that “the United States has been working to secure Marc Fogel’s release for some time.” But Mr. Fogel was not included in the prisoner swap in August that secured the release of the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.
“We have long called for his humanitarian release and tried to include him in the Aug. 1 deal, but were unable to,” the statement said. It added that Mr. Fogel had been designated in October as “wrongfully detained.” It was unclear why the department had waited until this week to announce the change in classification.
