Ryabkov: there are no grounds for including Whelan in the lists for the exchange of prisoners with the United States

There are no grounds for activating the mechanism of the Council of Europe Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons in the Situation with the US citizen Paul Whelan, convicted in the Russian Federation for espionage. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov announced this to journalists on Wednesday on the sidelines of the Primakov Readings forum.

“We constantly remind Americans of our readiness to go along the path of activating the mechanism of the Council of Europe Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons of 1983. This is not an exchange. This is completely different,” he said. committed no, because he was convicted under an article that interprets his actions as very serious crimes “

“Unlike what we consider far-fetched, politicized accusations and, in some cases, simply illegal actions of American power structures to seize and, in the case of Yaroshenko, kidnap our citizen. Parallels are impossible here, common sense must be shown here,” Ryabkov continued.

The Deputy Minister noted that Russia many times passed on to the American side the options for “whom to whom it could be considered in order to activate the convention mechanism”, but they are not ready to substantively discuss these schemes.

Earlier, lawyer Olga Karlova said that her client Whelan expects that the Russian authorities will extradite him to the United States for further serving his sentence. She also added that they expect that “this issue will be discussed at a meeting between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden.”

Whelan, who is a citizen of the United States, as well as Great Britain, Canada and Ireland, was detained by the FSB of Russia in a room of the Metropol Hotel in Moscow during a spy action on December 28, 2018. The Investigation Department of the FSB of Russia opened a criminal case against him under Article 276 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Espionage”). The Moscow City Court found him guilty and sentenced him to 16 years in a strict regime colony.

Source : TASS