The US and Russia have agreed to a prisoner swap, including former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich. However, Marc Fogel, an American teacher sentenced to 14 years for possessing medical marijuana, is not among those being released.
Marc Fogel.
Fogel, detained since 2021, was arrested for bringing marijuana prescribed for his chronic pain into Russia. Despite speculation and hopes that he might be included in the recent prisoner exchange, Fogel remains incarcerated and will for the foreseeable future. This decision comes despite a resolution passed by the U.S. Senate in June, urging the Biden administration to prioritize his release, citing concerns over the severity of his sentence and his health.
“Marc Fogel has undergone three back surgeries, a spinal fusion, a hip replacement, and two knee surgeries to correct various injuries and health issues, which have left him with chronic back pain and a permanent limp”, states the resolution. “[He] did not wish to use opioids to manage his pain and was instead prescribed medical marijuana for pain management in a manner consistent with the State law of Pennsylvania.”
The resolution states that Russia “has presented no evidence to the contrary” that Fogel planned to use the marijuana for personal medical use.
When the bill was introduced, Senator John Fetterman, who is from the same state as Fogel, said:
I’m proud to stand with my colleagues today and again call for the immediate release of all Americans arbitrarily detained in Russia, including Marc Fogel, a Pennsylvanian”, said Senator Fetterman when the bill was introduced. “Marc is a history teacher who dedicated the last 35 years of his life to teaching young people. When he returned for his tenth and final year teaching in Russia, Marc was detained for carrying a small amount of medical marijuana, which was prescribed by his doctor.
But Marc has now spent over a year of a fourteen-year sentence in a Russian prison because of a bogus ‘large-scale drug trafficking’ conviction. A fourteen-year sentence is absurd – even by Russian standards. The bottom line is that Marc’s punishment simply does not match the crime. We must bring Marc, and all other unjustly detained Americans, home.
