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Russian Court Sentences Paul Whelan, an American, to 16 Years on Spy Charges Russian Court Sentences American, Paul Whelan, to 16 Years on Spy Charges
(about 8 hours later)
MOSCOW — A court in Moscow on Monday sentenced an American to 16 years in a high-security prison on espionage charges that he and his family have described as a tool to increase his value in a potential future trade for Russians held in the United States. MOSCOW — A court in Moscow on Monday sentenced an American who claims he was framed by Russian agents to 16 years in a high-security prison for espionage, delivering another blow to President Trump’s already faltering efforts to “get along with Russia.”
The American, Paul N. Whelan, 50, had been a frequent visitor to Russia before his last trip to the country ended in December 2018 with an arrest at a luxury hotel in Moscow, where he was attending a wedding, by agents of the Federal Security Service. The harsh sentence against Paul N. Whelan, 50, further unravels a relationship that, despite Mr. Trump’s often favorable public remarks about President Vladimir V. Putin, has been spiraling downward since a series of mutual expulsions of diplomats in 2018.
“This is slimy, greasy, rubbish Russian politics — nothing more, nothing less,” Mr. Whelan said before the announcement of the sentence, which was two years shorter than prosecutors had asked for. “This is all a political theater,” he later added. Speaking outside the courthouse on Monday, John J. Sullivan, the U.S. Ambassador to Russia, denounced the case as “mockery of justice” symptomatic of what he described as the “low ebb” of relations between Moscow and Washington.
Mr. Whelan said that he did not understand a word of what had happened during the proceedings on Monday because they had been conducted entirely in Russian. He said that Mr. Whelan, held since his arrest in late 2018 at Lefortovo, a bleak czarist-era prison in Moscow, had been “horribly mistreated.” Mr. Whelan, he said, had repeatedly been denied medical treatment for a hernia until having to undergo a rushed operation at the end of May. Mr. Whelan’s family has said that his health is deteriorating.
Mr. Whelan, a former Marine who also holds British, Irish and Canadian citizenships, is a Russophile who had made several trips to the country in the years before his arrest. During those visits he made contact with several low-ranking members of the Russian military, possibly drawing attention to himself among the Russian intelligence agencies. Vladimir A. Zherebenkov, Mr. Whelan’s lawyer, said that his client had been under surveillance in Russia for many years.
Over his numerous visits to Russia, Mr. Whelan has traveled around the country by railroad and cultivated dozens of friends through Vkontakte, a Russia social media platform akin to Facebook. Many of those friends had military backgrounds, and relatives suggested that he might have been seeking out kindred spirits, given his own long service in the Marines. Mr. Whelan has repeatedly protested his innocence, insisting that he was set up by Russia’s Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., the post-Soviet version of the K.G.B., in order to imprison an American who could later be traded for a Russian detained in the United States. The severity of the sentence suggested Russia could be angling for the release of a high-profile prisoner in the United States.
Since the end of 2018, Mr. Whelan has been held in Lefortovo, a high-security prison in Moscow, and he has publicly expressed his anger with his detention, saying that he is innocent. Vladimir A. Zherebenkov, Mr. Whelan’s lawyer, said after the verdict that the defense team had already received offers to exchange him.
Speaking after the hearing, John J. Sullivan, the American ambassador to Russia, said that Mr. Whelan had been “horribly mistreated” in prison. Ambassador Sullivan added that Mr. Whelan had been repeatedly denied medical treatment for a hernia until having to undergo a rushed operation at the end of May. Mr. Whelan’s family has said that his health is deteriorating. “It will be up to the Kremlin to offer an exchange,” said Mr. Zherebenkov. “The question will then be sorted on the level of the foreign ministry.”
Outside the court building, Ambassador Sullivan told journalists that the proceedings were “a mockery of justice.” He said that Russia would likely want to trade Mr. Whelan for someone like Viktor A. Bout, a Russian arms dealer sentenced to 25 years by a New York court in 2012, or Konstantin Yaroshenko, a former Russian pilot convicted in the United States on drug dealing charges.
“Prison authorities and the Russian government waited until he had a dramatic health emergency even though they had been alerted to the fact that he had this problem; they waited months and months to get him medical treatment,” he said. Mr. Bout, on whose career the film “Lord of War” is loosely based, is so well known and widely reviled that any move to trade him would create an uproar. Nonetheless, Mr. Putin has frequently voiced outrage at the arrests of Russian citizens by the United States and demanded their release.
Ambassador Sullivan added that Russia-U.S. affairs were currently at “a low ebb” and that Mr. Whelan’s sentence was certainly “an impediment.” Dmitri S. Peskov, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, said after the Monday verdict that the Kremlin does not get involved in prisoner exchanges, despite ample evidence to the contrary.
The U.S. State Department said it was “outraged” by the verdict and called Mr. Whelan’s treatment by the Russian authorities “appalling.” Mr. Whelan — who holds British, Irish and Canadian citizenships, in addition to American — had been a frequent visitor to Russia and counted himself as a Russophile before his last trip, in December 2018, to attend a wedding.
“We have serious concerns that Mr. Whelan was deprived of the fair-trial guarantees that Russia is required to provide him in accordance with its international human rights obligations,” the department said in a statement, adding, “We demand Paul Whelan’s immediate release.” During those visits he made contact with several low-ranking members of the Russian military, possibly drawing the attention of Russian intelligence agencies. Mr. Zherebenkov said his client had been under surveillance in Russia for many years.
Mr. Whelan’s conviction comes at an awkward moment in relations between Washington and Moscow. On Sunday, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said that the United States was in a “deep internal crisis,” which he attributed to the refusal among President Trump’s opponents to accept his “obvious” election victory in 2016. Mr. Whelan served in the Marine Corps until 2008, when he received a bad conduct discharge after a larceny conviction. At the time of his arrest, he was director of global security and investigations for BorgWarner, an international automotive parts manufacturer based in Michigan.
Russia was found to have interfered in that election to assist the Trump campaign. There had earlier been speculation that Russia might want to trade Mr. Whelan for Marina Butina, a Russian firearms advocate who befriended prominent Republicans during the 2016 presidential campaign and pleaded guilty in April 2019 to violating foreign agent registration rules. But after she had served 15 months in prison, the United States deported her with no sign of any reciprocal move by Russia.
Mr. Whelan once described the legal process into which he had been caught up as “the Moscow goat rodeo,” and at one point he reached out to President Trump to “keep America great” by taking action to secure his release. Instead, prosecutors pressed on with their case against Mr. Whelan in a series of secret hearings and last month requested that he receive an 18-year sentence.
“We had hoped that the court might show some independence but, in the end, Russian judges are political, not legal, entities,” said David Whelan, Mr. Whelan’s brother, in a statement after the verdict. “We understand that Paul’s lawyers may appeal this decision within the next two weeks. We hope that, in their continued search for justice for Paul, that the appeal is successful. But Russians do not expect justice from their legal system, and neither do we.” He was first seized by F.S.B. agents at a luxury hotel near the Kremlin, shortly after a Russian friend had handed him a thumb drive; Mr. Whelan said he thought it contained pictures from their recent trip to a monastery town near Moscow. Russian officials said it contained classified information, prompting the foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, to declare that Mr. Whelan had been “caught red handed.”
Now that his brother has been convicted by a court, David Whelan said he hoped that the governments of Russia and the United States could start discussing his release. According to Mr. Zherebenkov, the lawyer, Russian prosecutors claimed that Mr. Whelan was an officer with the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.
Mr. Zherebenkov, Paul Whelan’s lawyer, said after the verdict that the defense team had already received offers to exchange him.
“It will be up to the Kremlin to offer an exchange,” Mr. Zherebenkov said. “The question will then be sorted on the level of the Foreign Ministry.”
Mr. Zherebenkov specified that Russia would probably want Mr. Whelan to be exchanged for Viktor A. Bout, a Russian arms dealer convicted in the United States, or for the Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, a convicted drug dealer held in an American prison.
Mr. Putin has frequently voiced outrage at the arrest of Russian citizens by the United States and demanded their release. Dmitri S. Peskov, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, said after the Monday verdict that the Kremlin did not get involved in questions of prisoner exchanges.
“He was sentenced by a court decision,” Mr. Peskov said, speaking about Mr. Whelan. “The charges against him were proven and accepted by court.”
Mr. Whelan’s trial has been closed to the public. Mr. Zherebenkov said that the Russian prosecutors had little evidence to support their case.
Mr. Whelan has maintained that a Russian friend handed him a thumb drive he thought contained pictures from their recent trip to a monastery town near Moscow, but Russian officials said it contained classified information.
According to Mr. Zherebenkov, Russian prosecutors claimed that Mr. Whelan was an officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency of the United States.
“The information on that thumb drive was fake,” Mr. Zherebenkov said after the verdict was announced. “This was a provocation.”“The information on that thumb drive was fake,” Mr. Zherebenkov said after the verdict was announced. “This was a provocation.”
Mr. Whelan was born in Ottawa to British parents, said his twin brother, David, who also maintains Canadian citizenship. It was not immediately clear how Paul Whelan had obtained Irish citizenship. Mr. Whelan’s conviction comes at an awkward moment in relations between Washington and Moscow, with the presidents of both countries battered by domestic crises. Mr.Putin, facing widespread grumbling from a population whose already-waning economic fortunes have deteriorated significantly because of the coronavirus, has seen his approval ratings fall to their lowest level since he came to power 20 years ago.
In 2008, Paul Whelan was given a bad conduct discharge from the Marines after a larceny conviction. At the time of his arrest, he was director of global security and investigations for BorgWarner, an international automotive parts manufacturer based in Michigan. Mr. Trump’s ratings have also slumped amid widespread criticism over his handling of the pandemic and of racial tensions and protests over the killings of African-Americans by the police.
On Sunday, Mr. Putin of Russia took a swipe at Mr. Trump over what he said was America’s poor response to the virus compared with Russia’s. He also took aim at Mr. Trump’s opponents, who he said had contributed to a “deep internal crisis” in the United States by refusing to accept Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016.
Mr. Whelan, who once described the legal process against him as “the Moscow goat rodeo,” has repeatedly appealed to Mr. Trump to secure his release. On Monday held up a sign in court that, in addition to denouncing his trial as a “sham” and stating that “Paul’s Life Matters,” said: “Decisive Action from Potus and PM’s needed!” a reference to the President of the United States and the prime ministers of Britain, Canada and Ireland.
Whether President Trump has much sway in Moscow these days, however, is unclear. Russia’s political establishment rejoiced when he won the 2016 election, a vote that U.S. intelligence agencies say Russia interfered in with a disinformation campaign to assist Mr. Trump.
But high hopes in Moscow that Mr. Trump would deliver on his pledges to “get along with Russia” have steadily dimmed, particularly after the 2018 poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. Washington, outraged by what Britain said was attempted murder using a chemical weapon, expelled scores of Russian diplomats and Moscow responded by ordering that staff numbers at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow be slashed dramatically.
State-controlled Russian media outlets, which routinely denounced Ms. Clinton as a Russophobic warmonger in 2016, have mostly avoided attacking Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic candidate in November. But they have grown increasingly critical of Mr. Trump, often mocking him as a dangerous buffoon.
A particular sore point for the Kremlin has been Mr. Trump’s withdrawal from a web of arms control and other agreements. In May, Mr. Trump announced that the United States would be leaving the Open Skies Treaty, which allows nations to fly over each other’s territory with sophisticated sensor equipment to assure that they are not preparing military action.
Moscow viewed Mr. Trump’s decision as a sign that Washington is also preparing to exit the last major arms treaty remaining with Russia: New START, which limits the United States and Russia to 1,550 deployed nuclear missiles each. It expires in February, weeks after the next presidential inauguration.
Moscow has pushed to extend the treaty but has made no headway in the face of Mr. Trump’s demand that China also join it, something that Beijing is highly unlikely to do.
Monday’s verdict against Mr. Whalen suggests that the Kremlin has decided it sees no upside in doing the Trump administration any favors.
“We had hoped that the court might show some independence but, in the end, Russian judges are political, not legal, entities,” said David Whelan, Mr. Whelan’s brother, in a statement after the verdict.
His family hopes for a successful appeal, David Whelan said, “but Russians do not expect justice from their legal system, and neither do we.”