Correspondence in captivity: Letters and phone calls from Paul Whelan reveal Russian tactics toward American detainee
CNN
It was June 2021 when my phone first rang with a call from a Russian number.
It was June 2021 when my phone first rang with a call from a Russian number. I was working from home, seated at my dining room table in the middle of the afternoon, and suspected it was spam. Instead, it was Paul Whelan. That phone call was the first of a dozen I would receive from the detained American as he spent more than five years in Russian detention before his release in July as part of a historic prisoner swap. I also received four handwritten letters. When I began to cover Whelan’s case in December 2018, I never expected to be able to speak with him in real-time about his experiences. I have covered many wrongful detainee cases, but this has been the only one in which a prisoner was able to reach out directly to the media.
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