While some critics say U.S. involvement in the exchange could encourage foreign governments to hold Americans hostage or prisoner on false charges as a form of leverage, Reed told CNN’s Jake Tapper that he did not accept their argument.
“The thing you need to understand is countries like North Korea – Russia now, obviously, China, Syria, Iran, Venezuela – such countries will take the Americans hostage, no matter what,” Reed told Tapper in a recent video. CNN’s special report, “Finally Home: The Trevor Reed Interview,” airing Sunday night. “And even if they don’t get some kind of replacement for these prisoners, they will do so out of pure malice anyway, just to show the United States that ‘We took your citizens.'”
Reed told Tapper in a video on CNN’s State of the Union that he believed “these nations will continue to do so as long as American citizens travel there.”
Reed, a former U.S. Marine, was sentenced to nine years in prison in July 2020 after being accused of endangering the “life and health” of Russian police in a brawl last year. He and his family denied the charges against him.
As part of an exchange of prisoners with the United States for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian smuggler convicted of conspiracy to import cocaine, Reid was released from Russia in April. The United States has changed Yaroshenko’s sentence.
Reed, in a video of the upcoming interview, argues that what sets the United States apart from other nations is their willingness to bring Americans home when they are held hostage or wrongfully imprisoned abroad.
“The United States has come out and made the ethical decision to exchange prisoners to bring their innocent Americans out of this country, even while exchanging them for someone who is better known and valued in the United States,” Reed said, later adding that “Russians, Chinese, Venezuelans, Iran, Syria, North Korea – none of them has ever in their history been and will ever exchange for a prisoner who is simply one of their citizens on average. They would never do that. And that’s what sets the United States apart. ”
Meanwhile, two other Americans, Paul Whelan and Britney Greener, remain in custody in Russia.
A senior administration official told CNN last month that they do not necessarily see Reid’s successful repatriation as momentum for the Whelan and Greener cases, but said the US government will continue to push for their release and the channel for potential exchanges will remain open. .
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken spoke with Greener’s wife, Sherel Greener, last week.
According to a senior State Department official, the top US diplomat said Greener’s release was a top priority for the ministry and attracted his full attention.
Reed remembers his way of thinking in prison, the terrible conditions in the Russian psychiatric hospital
In an earlier video clip from Sunday night’s documentary, Reed recalls his time in a prison psychiatric facility and discusses his thinking during his time behind bars.
Reed told Tapper that he believed he had been sent to a psychiatric hospital as punishment for his ongoing attempts to appeal his sentence.
He described the facility: “There was blood all over the wall – where the prisoners committed suicide, or killed other prisoners, or tried to do so.”
“The toilet is just a hole in the floor. And, you know, there’s nonsense everywhere, all over the floor, on the walls. There are also people who walk around and look like zombies,” he continued.
Reed said he hadn’t slept for days for fear of what people in his cell might do to him.
In another video released Friday, Reed said he had given up hope of being released from Russian prison.
“And a lot of people won’t like what I’m going to say about it, but I kind of saw their hope as a weakness,” he said. “So I didn’t want to have that hope of being released in any way and then being taken away.
“I couldn’t afford to hope,” he later said.
Devan Cole of CNN contributed to this report.
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