Marc Fogel, the American teacher and former U.S. diplomat sentenced to 14 years in a Russian prison for cannabis possession, has been released in a deal negotiated by Steve Witkoff, the Middle East envoy for President Donald Trump. His release, reported by The New York Times, comes after more than three years of detention.
Fogel was arrested in August 2021 after Russian customs officials found approximately 17 grams of cannabis in his luggage. He was classified as a wrongly detained American citizen by the Biden administration late last year, a designation that his legal team said should have come much sooner.
“We are beyond grateful, relieved, and overwhelmed that after more than three years of detention, our father, husband, and son, Marc Fogel, is finally coming home,” Fogel’s family said in a statement.
The negotiations for Fogel’s release were conducted privately by Witkoff, a billionaire New York real estate executive. Following his release, Fogel was flown out of Moscow on Witkoff’s private plane.
This development is seen as a potential gesture of goodwill between Russia and the United States in the early weeks of Trump’s second administration. It is unclear whether Witkoff engaged with Russian officials on other diplomatic matters, but his visit to Moscow is believed to be the first by a senior U.S. official since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
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