Exchange with Russia: “Tiergarten murderer” released

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Lerato Khumalo

The US journalist convicted of espionage is to be released from Russia. In return, a convicted murderer will travel from Germany to Russia.

Russia and the West have agreed on a large-scale prisoner exchange, which also includes the release of the US reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was convicted in Russia. Not only will the Wall Street Journal reporter, who was imprisoned in March 2023, be released, but a total of 16 people who were imprisoned in Russia and Belarus. They include the German Rico K., who was recently pardoned after previously being sentenced to death. Other people released include the former US soldier Paul Whelan and the Kremlin critic Ilya Yashin.

The entire exchange is said to have been coordinated by the Turkish secret service. In return, the Russian Vadim Krasikov, who was imprisoned in Germany, was extradited. Krasikov was sentenced to life imprisonment in Germany in December 2021 for the murder of a Chechen-Georgian dissident in Berlin’s Tiergarten.

The US journalist Gershkovich was sentenced to 16 years in a penal colony on July 19 for “espionage”. The trial against the 32-year-old lasted just over three weeks. The 54-year-old former US soldier Whelan was imprisoned in Russia in December 2018.

In recent days, the transfer of several opposition figures imprisoned in Russia and the unclear whereabouts of other prisoners have fueled speculation about an impending major prisoner exchange. According to the independent website “Sotavision”, the prisoners affected included not only Whelan but also the German-Russian Kevin Lik, who was convicted of treason.

According to their lawyers, Russian opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was convicted of “high treason” and “spreading false information”, and opposition politician Ilya Yashin, who was considered a close confidant of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, who was murdered in 2015, and a friend of Alexei Navalny, who died in a Russian prison camp, were also recently transferred.