American teacher Marc Fogel not included in prisoner swap with Russia

While the United States welcomes the return of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and three others imprisoned in Russia, Marc Fogel, a high school history teacher, remains behind bars.

A Pennsylvania native, Fogel and his wife had been living in Russia since 2012.

Fogel taught at a charter school in which his students’ parents were diplomats. During a return home in 2021, the couple decided to spend just one more year in Russia. 

The 65-year-old was arrested in August 2021 when Russian authorities found him with about half an ounce of medical marijuana prescribed to him for chronic pain in the United States. Marijuana is illegal in Russia, but Fogel did not lie that he was transporting it into the country. He asked for leniency in his trial but was sentenced to 14 years in a penal colony for drug trafficking in June 2022 — at the height of the war in Ukraine. 

U.S.-Russia relations have been incredibly strained, which likely contributed to Fogel’s harsh sentencing. However, the U.S. was able to negotiate a prisoner swap for WNBA player Brittney Griner, who, like Fogel, was arrested for having marijuana in her luggage in February 2022. She was sentenced to nine years and six months in prison. However, Griner was only in prison for 10 months when the U.S. conducted a prisoner swap with Russia for Viktor Bout, an arms dealer, in December 2022. 

At that point in time, Fogel had been in prison for 16 months. 

Sens. Bob Casey (D-PA) and John Fetterman (D-PA) and Reps. Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA), Mike Kelly (R-PA), and Chris Deluzio (D-PA) all made a plea to the Biden administration for Fogel to be included in the prisoner swap.

“Marc is a Pennsylvania teacher with severe health issues who has been unjustly imprisoned in a Russian prison for three years, and as the congressional members who represent Marc and his family, we have been pushing to bring Marc home as quickly as possible,” the lawmakers wrote. “As negotiations are ongoing with the Russian Federation, we respectfully request that any potential prisoner swap include Marc Fogel.”

However, State Department officials said they were unable to make it happen.

Fogel’s 95-year-old mother, Malphine Fogel, filed a lawsuit against Secretary of State Antony Blinken in June for failing to designate her son as “wrongfully detained.”

“[Griner] was in jail for 10 months before President Biden got her out,” Malphine Fogel told the New York Post. “My son has been in for three years, and I haven’t heard from the president or anyone in Washington.” 

She spoke with former President Donald Trump, who allegedly promised he would get her son out of prison, prior to him taking the stage at the Butler rally. 

The prisoner swap is considered the largest one in post-Soviet history, involving a total of seven countries.