According to BBC News, former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan is a citizen of the U.S., the U.K., Canada, and the Irish Republic. Born to British parents in Canada, Whelan moved to the U.S. as a child. In 2008, Whelan, with a background in IT, was released from the Marines on larceny-related charges. In 2018, Whelan was in Russia, a country he had visited several times in the past, when he was arrested on suspicion of spying. Uncorroborated reports at that time claimed Whelan received digital classified information on Russian intelligence officers, as BBC News explains. It was at first believed that Whelan was taken into custody in Russia in hopes of swapping Whalen for Russian gun rights activist Maria Butina, who was deported from the U.S. to Russia in 2019, as the outlet goes on to report.
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In 2020, Whelan was sentenced to 16 years in a Russian prison, at which time the U.S. government classified Whelan as wrongfully detained, according to NBC 5 Chicago. On the news that Whelan would not return home, his brother David (pictured) said that though the Whelan family did not begrudge Griner her freedom, in their view, the U.S. government should be assertive in their efforts to bring Whelan home. “It’s clear that the U.S. government has no concessions that the Russian government will take for Paul Whelan. And so Paul will remain a prisoner until that changes,” David Whelan said (per BBC News)
