Biden meets with the family of a US citizen accused of espionage and aggression in Russia

MADRID, March 31 (Royals Blue) –

US President Joe Biden has met with the parents of Trevor Reed, a former US Marine who was sentenced in July 2020 to nine years in Russia for assaulting a Russian police officer.

“Biden reiterated his commitment to continue working to secure the release of Trevor, Paul Whelan and other Americans wrongfully detained in Russia and elsewhere, and to provide all possible assistance until they are released and return home to their families, who advocate so passionately for his release,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement.

Psaki has stressed that “the president’s national security team will continue to be in regular contact with the Reeds, the Whelan family and other families of Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad” and has assured that “they are committed to putting an end” to this “nightmare”.

According to the White House statement, this is President Biden’s second interaction with the Reed family, since on March 8 he spoke by phone to find out the details of the case while he was in Texas.

Reed, a 29-year-old ex-marine, was sentenced in July 2020 to nine years in prison by a Moscow court for assaulting a Russian police officer. His family has denied the charges and US authorities have called the evidence against him flimsy.

For his part, Whelan, who also has a Canadian and British passport, was arrested in December 2018 at a Moscow hotel by agents of the Federal Security Service. According to Russian intelligence, he was found to have an external memory device containing classified information. He has been sentenced in mid-2020 to 16 years in prison for a crime of espionage.