Russia Arrests American Marine on ‘Espionage’ Charges
The family of retired U.S. Marine Paul Whelan said “his innocence is undoubted” in a statement published on Tuesday, even as Whelan was held in a Russian jail on charges of espionage.
Whelan, a 48-year-old Michigan resident who currently works in corporate security. According to his family, he was in Moscow to attend a wedding when he was arrested on Friday. Russia’s FSB security service did not acknowledge the arrest until Monday when it claimed Whelan was detained on a “spy mission.” As of Wednesday, the FSB has not clarified the charges or produced any evidence against Whelan.
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USA Today reported on Wednesday that Paul Whelan’s military records show him serving in the Marine reserves from 1994 to 2008, with deployments to Iraq as an administrative clerk in 2004 and 2006. The records say he was discharged in 2008 after he was convicted “on several charges related to larceny.”
The Detroit Free Press elaborated that Whelan was “convicted at a special court-martial in January 2008 on several charges related to larceny and was given a bad-conduct discharge in December 2008 at the rank of private.”
The Free Press said Whelan was a police officer between 1988 and 2000, then worked at the Kelly Services consulting and temporary service agency from 2001 to 2016, taking jobs that included “campus security as well as electronic and IT-related security.”
Whelan’s current employer BorgWarner, an auto parts supply company, also released a statement on his arrest, saying, “We can confirm that Mr. Whelan currently serves as the company’s director, global security. He is responsible for overseeing security at our facilities in Auburn Hills, Michigan and at other company locations around the world.”
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Global financier Bill Browder, a devoted critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, gave an interview to the Detroit Free Press on Wednesday in which he bluntly accused Putin of taking Whelan hostage because Maria Butina made a deal with prosecutors
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Former CIA operative John Sipher told NPR Whelan is “absolutely not” the kind of operative American intelligence services would recruit for a mission to Russia, because “we would never put a U.S. citizen, without diplomatic immunity, in harm’s way this way, especially looking after low-level things like this.”
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https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2019/01/02/russia-arrests-american-marine-espionage-charges/
ELITE BANKERS AND C_A NOT HAPPY ABOUT HIS ARREST?
In that case I'd say: another nice move by the 'global alliance on destroying DS'.
WINNING WORLDWIDE.
(Just FYI - arrest was notable already.)