The four-year anniversary of retired Marine Paul Whelan’s arrest in Russia on trumped-up spying charges is coming up and the American hostage says he’s “disappointed” that more hasn’t been done to secure his release.
“I was arrested for a crime that never occurred,” he told CNN in a phone call from the penal colony where he’s being held. “I don’t understand why I’m still sitting here.”
The release of WNBA superstar Brittney Griner in exchange for the murderous arms dealer Viktor Bout has Whelan and his family choosing their words very carefully. Not only do they not want to anger Paul’s jailers, but getting Joe Biden mad at them isn’t going to help their cause.
“It is so important to me that it is clear that we do not begrudge Ms. Griner her freedom,” David Whelan, Paul’s brother, said. “As I have often remarked, Brittney’s and Paul’s cases were never really intertwined. It has always been a strong possibility that one might be freed without the other.”
A senior U.S. official said the U.S. government had sought to have both Griner and Whelan released as part of a swap with the Kremlin, which wanted the return of Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer who has served 11 years of a 25-year sentence in the U.S. But the official said that Russia has treated Whelan differently because he is accused of spying and that the Kremlin ultimately gave the White House the choice of Griner or no one after different options were proposed.
The official said that Whelan’s sister was informed Wednesday about the process to release Griner, a player for the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury, and that another senior U.S. official was able to speak with Whelan from prison Thursday and inform him about the outcome of the negotiations.
It’s possible that the Biden administration played up the “helpless woman” angle as Whelan’s lawyer hinted.
Whelan’s Russian lawyer, Vladimir Zherebenkov, said that choosing Griner was “more “humane” because she is a woman and an Olympic champion while Whelan was in the military and it is “easier for him to be in custody.”
Brittney Griner had tens of thousands of people writing and calling the White House begging Biden to “do something” to get her back. Griner is a celebrity and a prominent member of the LGBTQ community. She also happens to be black–and to think that none of that matters, you would have to ignore politics the way it’s played today.
Meanwhile, Paul Whelan rots in jail for a crime he didn’t commit.
Whelan said he would like to speak to Biden directly, noting he had spoken to an administration official earlier in the day about the situation, but “I think that message really needs to go to people like the president so they understand personally what I’m dealing with and what we deal with in these foreign prisons and under these circumstances.”
“It’s quite obvious that I’m being held hostage,” he said.
Biden acknowledged the Whelan family on Thursday, saying that the prisoner swap for Griner was “not a choice of which American to bring home.”
That may be true, but Griner admitted that she (stupidly) tried to get hash oil through a Russian airport while Paul Whelan was an American businessman falsely accused of spying. Which American is truly “innocent”?
Related: State Media: NBC Report Contradicts White House on Griner, Is Quietly Revised
Maybe if Whelan was a gay, superstar athlete he would have gotten better consideration from the Biden administration.
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