President Biden’s 10-month effort to free Brittney Griner faced opposition from the Justice Department, which viewed a one-for-one swap involving the notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout as a mistake.
, whose arms fueled conflicts from Sudan to Rwanda to Afghanistan to Angola, is nicknamed the “Merchant of Death,” and his illicit transactions with violent regimes and militant groups earned him a 25-year sentence in federal prison.After the two passed within a few feet of each other on an airport tarmac in the Persian Gulf on Thursday, a public debate raged in the United States over how the government handles prisoner exchanges for citizens it considers “wrongfully detained.
For months, State Department officials had advocated a swap involving Bout that would include the release of both Whelan and Griner, but Moscow refused unless the United States also secured the release of Vadim Krasikov, a former colonel from Russia’s internal spy agency, said officials familiar with the matter.Krasikov is serving a life sentence for murder in Germany, and Berlin had made clear that releasing him was a non-starter, a U.S. official said.
“This was not a choice of which American to bring home. The choice was one or none,” he said during a news conference in Washington. “We make no apologies for making tough decisions if it results in the return of a wrongfully detained American,” said the official. “And, just as we’re doing that, we’re taking steps to deter other countries from engaging in this practice.”
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