North Texas Marine veteran Trevor Reed will remain imprisoned in Russia after his appeal was moved to a lower court Tuesday.
John Sullivan, U.S. ambassador to Russia, said on Twitter that "justice has again been denied" but appeal proceedings will continue.
“His appeal was not decided today, the proceedings continue, and Trevor remains in jail for a crime he didn’t commit," Sullivan wrote.
NBC 5 spoke to Trevor Reed's father, who said this about today's proceedings: “The courts failed to send the appeals case to my son in English which he requested a month or two ago. This is typical. So when they got there on the court date he basically said, 'Where is my stuff? I can’t have any input. I don't know if my attorneys are arguing what I want them to argue."
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Reed, of Granbury, has been jailed in Russia since his arrest in 2019 on charges that he assaulted police officers in Moscow who were driving him to a police station after picking him up following a night of heavy drinking at a party.
He was convicted in 2020 and sentenced to nine years in prison.
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Since then, Biden administration officials have repeatedly called for the release of Reed, as well as Paul Whelan, a corporate security executive from Michigan who is jailed in Russia on espionage-related charges his family said is bogus. The White House said both men are being wrongly detained.
His parents, Joey and Paula Reed traveled to Washington last month to meet with President Joe Biden and senior staffers at the White House following a phone conversation when the president visited Fort Worth.
After the Reeds had stood along the route of Biden’s motorcade in hopes it would stop — it did not — the White House said it would work to schedule a meeting. Joey Reed briefly spoke about the meetings Tuesday.
“We have been told that we made an impact on the president which is what we wanted to do. We wanted to tell him about Trevor, and you know, how Trevor has handled himself under these conditions,” said Joey Reed.
The Reed family said they saw Trevor on a screen, and that he looks gaunt, with dark circles under his eyes.
“Yes, it is hard on us, but Trevor is the one suffering, not us. He is going through the worst of it, and he is handling it the best,” said Paula Reed.
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