American Jailed in Russia Goes on Hunger Strike, Family Says

(Bloomberg) -- A former U.S. marine imprisoned in Russia has gone on hunger strike to protest his conditions in jail, his family said. Prison officials denied that.

Trevor Reed, 30, who’s serving nine years after being found guilty last year of assaulting two police officers, is being held in a small room with a hole in the floor for a toilet, an emailed statement from his family said. He’s not been permitted to speak to his parents for almost four months and isn’t allowed to receive books, letters or any supplies or to communicate with the U.S. Embassy, it added. 

The Federal Prison Service said he’s taking food as normal and hasn’t informed them of any refusal. In an emailed statement, the agency said conditions of his imprisonment are in line with Russian law.

His lawyers said they were confident that Reed has been refusing food since Nov. 4.

A second jailed American, former Marine Paul Whelan, has applied unsuccessfully to be transferred to serve his sentence in the U.S. An appeal court Monday upheld the decision to refuse to consider his request. Defense lawyers said another appeal is planned.

Whelan, 51, recently spent two weeks in an isolation cell because of his inability to communicate with prison guards in Russian, his lawyer said.

U.S. President Joe Biden raised the imprisoned Americans’ cases at his Geneva summit with President Vladimir Putin in June. 

The U.S. Embassy in Moscow said it didn’t have any immediate comment. Reed and Whelan, who deny any wrongdoing, are being held in separate penal colonies in the Mordovia region east of Moscow.

Russia made no visible progress on past efforts to negotiate a swap of Whelan and Reed for two Russians jailed in the U.S., Viktor Bout and Konstantin Yaroshenko.

Bout, an arms dealer dubbed “the merchant of death,” is serving a 25-year sentence he received in 2012 for plotting to sell weapons to a Colombian terrorist organization. Yaroshenko, a pilot, was jailed in 2011 for 20 years for conspiracy to smuggle cocaine into the U.S. Both were seized in sting operations, Bout in Thailand and Yaroshenko in Liberia, and brought to the U.S. for trial.

The U.S. argues Whelan and Reed were unfairly convicted unlike Bout, 54, and Yaroshenko, 53.

Reed’s family said it’s urging the Biden administration “to make a deal, even one that involves trading ‘guilty’ Russians for an innocent American college student.”

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