March Fogel had promptly traveled to and from Russia many times before his fateful last return to the country in August 2021. He had taught history for almost a decade, mainly to diplomats children, at the Anglo-American school in Moscow.
But entering Russia in front of what he had decided would have been his last year of teaching at school, Mr. Fogel was arrested and accused of smuggling drugs – less than an ounce of cannabis he used to treat chronic back pain. In June 2022, he was sentenced to a high security prison at 14; In Russia, minor phrases have often been given to the condemned killers.
After pressing the United States government, Mr. Fogel, now 63, was released on Tuesday after three and a half years of custody.
He and his wife Jane had been retired global adventurers, having lived in Colombia, Malaysia, Oman, Venezuela and Russia. But like other Americans imprisoned in Russia, such as the Brittney Griner basketball star and the journalist Evan Gershkovich, became a pawn in the power struggles between Moscow and Washington that surrounded the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Until a year before his arrest, Mr. Fogel, like all teachers of the Anglo-American school, had diplomatic immunity. But while tensions increased with the United States, Russia stripped the teachers of that protection. In 2022, Russia forced the school to close and confiscate its property.
Eric Rubin, a former American diplomat in Moscow who meets Mr. Fogel and worked to make him release, said his era “essentially a trawling situation”. He said he suspected that the Russian authorities knew that Mr. Fogel would transport cannabis vape cylinders when he landed at Sheremetyevo airport near Moscow with his wife, Jane.
“This was definitely a setup,” said Rubin, and the sentence was “outrageously inconsistent” with the sanctions put in place for similar crimes by Russian citizens, who often obtain supervised freedom rather than the time of prison.
Mr. Fogel had a medical prescription for medical marijuana and, according to a website managed by his family, “had planned to declare his medical marijuana in Russian customs”. The site says: “Marc has suffered from physical disorders including serious back and knee problems, hip and associated behind” and shows even X -rays that show pins and screws in the lower spine.
None of this counted for the authorities in Russia, in which the medical use of marijuana is not recognized, even if the family website says: “Russia had previously allowed foreigners to bring marijuana with the prescription of a doctor” .
Mr. Fogel was tried by Mrs. Griner’s court itself, who was sentenced for a similar crime and sentenced to nine years in a criminal colony. It was exchanged in December 2022, after almost 10 months of custody, for Viktor Bout, a dealente of Russian weapons convicted.
After his condemnation, Mr. Fogel was sent to a remote field of work north of Moscow, a place that made the visit for diplomats difficult, where his family said he received poor medical care and his ” deterioration was dramatic “. Last year they spoke of his “serious health problems”, their fear that his 95 -year -old mother would never have seen him and the urgency of “saving him from death potentially in a Russian prison”.
The family got angry with the Biden administration for not having paid the same attention to the difficult situation of Mr. Fogel who had those of Mrs. Griner, Mr. Gershkovich, the journalist of the Wall Street Journal who was released last August in one Prisoner exchange, O Paul Whelan, an American who has been held in Russia from 2018 until he was released with Mr. Gershkovich. In fact, they said, his own government had abandoned him.
On the website that requires his liberation, Fogel’s supporters said that before being elected, President Trump had promised his mother to be “committed to bringing Mr. Fogel home. At the end of December, the State Department He said the American government had declared Mr. Fogel as unjustly detained – a move that his family said he was three years late.
“Now that we have the full strength of the United States government behind it, we must do everything in our power to bring Marc at home as quickly and safely”, said the family in a declaration following the announcement .
Speaking during his Senate confirmation hearing in January, the secretary of state Marco Rubio said that it would be impossible to improve the relationships between Washington and Moscow unless Mr. Fogel had been released.
“If they are not willing to do it,” said Rubio, “then I think that the chances of improving relationships in Russia-USA are impossible”.