Russia: Appellate court upholds rejection to review Whelan’s handover to US: Earlier, Paul Whelan was sentenced to 16 years in a penal colony for espionage!

Nizhny Novgorod: The Fourth General Jurisdiction Court of Appeal has upheld the decision of Mordovia’s Supreme Court not to review the appeal of Paul Whelan who was sentenced to 16 years in a penal colony for espionage. His defense counsel requested that he be handed over to the US for the further incarceration there, a TASS correspondent reported from the court.

"[The decision is to be] left unchanged," judge Nikolai Volkov announced.

Earlier, Whelan’s defense appealed to the Moscow City Court to hand him over to the US for further incarceration based on the Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons which provides for such an opportunity. The Moscow City Court refused to review the issue and passed it on to a court in Mordovia where Whelan is serving his sentence. The court later reported that the appeal based on Article 470 of Russia’s Criminal Procedure Code was left without review, and was sent to Russia’s Ministry of Justice to collect the necessary information in accordance with the provisions of the international treaty, to which Russia is a party, as well as for the preliminary coordination of the transfer with the relevant US agency.

During proceedings, Whelan’s attorney Vladimir Zherebenkov said that the discussion of exchanging his client for a Russian incarcerated in the US had stalled. He noted that a number of his clients’ rights are being violated during his imprisonment in Russia, for example, he cannot receive his military pension and has no access to English-language media.

On December 28, 2018, Whelan, who has US, UK, Canadian and Irish citizenship, was taken into custody by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) in a room at Moscow’s Metropol Hotel while on an alleged spy mission. The FSB opened a criminal case against him on charges of espionage under Article 276 of the Russian Criminal Code. On June 15, 2020, the Moscow City Court found Whelan guilty of spying against Russia and sentenced him to 16 years in a high-security colony. Whelan is serving out his sentence in a correctional facility in Mordovia.