Marc Fogel, a high school teacher from Oakmont, is spending his third holiday season away from family, detained by Russian officials on at best questionable charges. Every day that passes without the State Department designating him as “wrongfully detained” is another day in which the government continues to treat Mr. Fogel’s case as an afterthought. Local political leaders, his family, and this editorial board have urged this, but the government has taken no action, nor explained why.
Western Pennsylvania’s politicians agree. On Dec. 21, both U.S. senators and five local members of Congress delivered an unequivocal message to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken: The U.S. must immediately reclassify Mr. Fogel as “wrongfully detained,” and any future prisoner exchange with Russia must include Mr. Fogel. Democrats Chris Deluzio and Summer Lee and Republicans Mike Kelly, Guy Reschenthaler and Glenn Thompson joined senators Bob Casey and John Fetterman in making the demand.
Ms. Lee had not previously joined her colleagues in pressing for Mr. Fogel’s release.
Mr. Fogel was detained on August 14, 2021 at an airport outside Moscow with a small amount of doctor-prescribed marijuana used to treat chronic back pain. He is now serving a 14-year incarceration in a Russian penal colony, a sentence the group calls “unconscionable.” Fogel, 61, remains at physical risk as his health deteriorates in a penal system not noted for its concern for the imprisoned.
His case parallels Brittney Griner’s, the professional WNBA athlete who was detained at the same airport carrying marijuana for medical use. The U.S. classified her as “wrongfully detained,” and secured her release in less than 10 months in exchange for a Russian arms dealer known as the “merchant of death.”
He’s not the only U.S. citizen wrongfully being held behind bars by Vladimir Putin’s regime: Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter, and former Marine Paul Whelan are both imprisoned under espionage charges. They have also received the “wrongfully detained” designation.
Why hasn’t Mr. Fogel? In their letter, the group says that the process of designating him as wrongfully detained “has stalled.” But has it? Did it even begin? Our nation is predicated on a belief in the equal protection of the law. This should include the equal protection from other nation’s arbitrary, unjust or politically manipulated laws.
The State Department must classify Mr. Fogel as wrongfully detained, and increase pressure on Russia for his immediate release, or at the very least explain what distinguishes him from the others.
The moral imperative of returning Mr. Fogel home only increases as time goes by. The longer U.S. citizens are detained by Russian authorities, the longer their freedoms and rights are being stolen by a dictatorial regime, and the longer families must suffer without their loved ones.
First Published: December 29, 2023, 10:30 a.m.
