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Reed, 29, was taken into custody final yr after an evening of heavy consuming throughout a go to to Russia to go to a longtime girlfriend Alina Tsybulnik, in response to TASS and Reed’s household.

Police informed state-run information company RIA-Novosti that Reed was concerned in an altercation with two ladies and a police unit that arrived at the scene following complaints of a disturbance and took him to a police station. Police alleged Reed resisted the arrest, attacked the driver, hit one other policeman, precipitated the automobile to swerve by grabbing the wheel and created a hazardous state of affairs on the highway, RIA acknowledged.

But Reed and his household asserted in a press release to CNN that the costs have been false, and accused the Russian police of making false and conflicting statements and of suppressing proof that might exonerate him.

“He has no memory of the evening past drinking vodka and being asked to toast many times,” the assertion revealed by Reed’s household mentioned.

Tsybulnik, Reed’s girlfriend, additionally disputed the police account, in response to TASS. “(The police) constantly change their story… in my opinion, Reed was too drunk to resist them,” Tsybulnik informed TASS.

US Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan known as the legal continuing towards Reed a “theater of the absurd” in a press release.

“This conviction, and a sentence of nine years, for an alleged crime that so obviously did not occur, is ridiculous,” Sullivan mentioned. “I cannot even say ‘miscarriage of justice’ because clearly ‘justice’ was not even considered. This was theater of the absurd.”

Senior Russian officers didn’t instantly reply to Sullivan’s criticism.

Reed is one of a number of American residents convicted in Russia in current years on costs that their households and in some instances the US authorities have mentioned are groundless.

In June, former US Marine Paul Whelan was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 16 years in jail by a Moscow courtroom, concluding a months-long case that put further pressure to already sophisticated US-Russian relations. The Trump administration has condemned the costs towards Whelan.
Whelan’s lawyer has speculated publicly that his sentencing can be used as leverage by the Kremlin to rearrange a prisoner swap for two Russians in US custody, Viktor Bout and Konstantin Yaroshenko.

The Foreign Ministry later known as ongoing hypothesis a couple of swap to be “rumors.” But final yr the ministry raised the risk that Yaroshenko — who was convicted of drug smuggling in 2011 and sentenced to 20 years in jail — might be returned “in exchange for any American national” held in Russia.

Yaroshenko is serving his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut. Bout, a Russian arms supplier dubbed the “Merchant of Death” who was sentenced to 25 years in US federal jail in 2012, has additionally been talked about in Russian and worldwide media stories a couple of potential swap.

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