GALLERY: A look behind Trevor Reed's life before Russian imprisonment
The prisoner swap marks the highest-profile release during the Biden administration of an American deemed wrongly detained abroad and comes even as families of detainees who have met over the last year with administration officials had described them as cool to the idea of an exchange.(Photos courtesy of the Reed family)
In a statement, the Reed family thanked President Joe Biden “for making the decision to bring Trevor home” as well as other administration officials.(Photos courtesy of the Reed family)
Reed was one of several Americans known to be held by Russia, including WNBA star Brittney Griner, who was detained in February after authorities said a search of her bag revealed a cannabis derivative.(Photos courtesy of the Reed family)
Reed’s parents scored a rare private meeting with Biden and administration officials last month. They had stood weeks earlier along his motorcade route during a presidential visit to Texas in hopes of attracting his attention, then later demonstrated outside the White House to ask for a meeting.(Photos courtesy of the Reed family)
Reed had been sentenced to nine years in prison, though his family has maintained his innocence and the U.S. government has described him as unjustly detained.(Photos courtesy of the Reed family)
As part of the prisoner exchange, the U.S. agreed to return Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot serving a 20-year federal prison sentence in Connecticut for conspiracy to smuggle cocaine into the country.(Photos courtesy of the Reed family)
Russia had sought his return for years while also rejecting entreaties by high-level U.S. officials to release Reed, who was nearing his 1,000th day in custody and whose health had recently been worsening, according to his family.(Photos courtesy of the Reed family)
The two prisoners were swapped in a European country.(Photos courtesy of the Reed family)
Though officials would not say where the transfer took place, in the hours before it happened commercial flight trackers identified a plane belonging to Russia’s federal security service as flying to Ankara, Turkey.(Photos courtesy of the Reed family)