CNN
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Imprisoned American Paul Whelan reached another grim milestone this week: he spent more than 2,000 days in Russian custody. He told CNN that this was “just an incredible amount of time” spent “in custody for a crime that never happened.” He called on the Biden administration to take “decisive action” to bring him and fellow imprisoned American Evan Gershkovich home.
“When you think about how long 2,000 days actually is, how many years, how many months, that’s an incredible number,” said Whelan, who spoke to CNN exclusively on Friday from his remote prison camp in Mordovia, Russia.
“You go to college to get a bachelor’s degree – that takes four years. Usually you’re in high school for three or four years. Even people join the military and serve four years. So when you think about five and a half years, that’s just an incredible amount of time,” he said.
Whelan, whose detention was declared unlawful by the U.S. State Department, was arrested in Moscow in December 2018 and sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2020 on espionage charges, which he has consistently and vehemently denied.
Although he believes the U.S. government is taking his case seriously, the ex-Marine told CNN he wishes the matter was taken “more seriously.”
“Decisive action needs to be taken,” Whelan said. “The United States needs to go out and do something — fill Guantanamo Bay with Russian officials, arrest Russian spies, do something that will make the Kremlin sit up and say, ‘Okay, yes, now it’s time for us to get Evan and Paul back, and then we want back what you have from us, and then we’ll be done with it,'” he described.
“Unless there is decisive action and a decisive response to this behavior, they will continue to catch people like Trevor (Reed) and Brittney (Griner) and Evan and others,” he said. A number of other Americans – Gordon Black, Alsu Kurmasheva and Ksenia Karelina – have been arrested in recent months but have not been deemed wrongfully detained by the U.S. State Department.
Whelan said he knew Gershkovich’s trial was scheduled to begin next week behind closed doors in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg. Gershkovich, who is wrongfully imprisoned, is also accused of espionage, which he denies.
Whelan speculated that “this could be an important milestone in his case, as it was in mine,” because “the Russians generally wanted convictions in these cases so they could claim legitimacy, regardless of the facts.”
“People here don’t say they’re going to court. They don’t say they’re seeking justice. They say they’re going to get a punishment, they’re going to be convicted. And that’s it. There’s no criminal justice system here. There’s no judicial system. It’s just a system that the government has been running for many years, putting people in prison for all kinds of dubious charges and dubious events. And in my case, that’s 100% true, and I’m sure it’s 100% true in Evan’s case. But people come to court here and they’re automatically guilty, and then they get a punishment, and that’s it,” he said.
US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the US government would “continue to work every day to bring Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan home.”
“This is something we are constantly working on and constantly pursuing,” he said at a State Department briefing last week. “We put a substantial offer on the table several months ago to secure the release of Evan and Paul Whelan, as we have stated publicly; we continue to work to secure their release. We do not talk publicly about the specifics, as has always been the case, but it is one of the highest priorities of the Secretary of State and the President.”
A US State Department official told CNN on Friday: “2,000 days is far too long for Paul to be unjustly detained in Russia,” adding: “Our deepest sympathies go out to Paul and his family, who feel the pain of separation in a way that very few people have experienced.”
In the meantime, Whelan remains held in a remote prison camp in Mordovia – about eight hours from Moscow – where he does manual labor in a garment factory.
“Everything is dusty and dirty and gross. And you do everything you can to stay cool and clean,” he described to CNN. “The food that is served to us is terrible. We really have to rely on personal shopping to stay healthy. Medical care is zero. There is no dental care at all.”
“It’s the worst environment you can imagine. I mean, it’s unbelievable that anyone even considers this a human right. You can’t get used to it,” Whelan said.
