Ex-marine freed by Russia describes squalid treatment in blood-smeared psychiatric ward populated by ‘zombies’

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A former US Marine released by Russia has described the horrific conditions he was subjected to while imprisoned in a psychiatric facility.

Trevor Reed says that he feared for his life as he was held in a blood-spattered cell with an open toilet on the floor and where inmates would walk around “like zombies.”

Mr Reed, 30, was imprisoned for 985 days before being released by Moscow in a prisoner exchange on 28 April.

“Inside of that cell, you know, that was not a good place,” Mr Reed told CNN in an interview set to air on Sunday.

“There was blood all over the walls there – where prisoners had killed themselves, or killed other prisoners, or attempted to do that.

“The toilet’s just a hole in the floor. And there’s, you know, crap everywhere, all over the floor, on the walls. There’s people in there also that walk around that look like zombies.”

Mr Reed, who is from Texas, was convicted of endangering the lives of two police officers while intoxicated during a visit to Moscow to see his girlfriend.

He was sentenced in 2020 to nine years’ imprisonment and says he believes that he was subjected to the squalid conditions as punishment for appealing the conviction.

And he added that he never let himself believe that he would be freed early from his sentence, saying “I wouldn’t let myself believe.”

The US agreed to swap a Russian drug trafficker serving a prison sentence in America in exchange for Mr Reed. Pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko was sentenced in 2011 to 20 years behind bars for conspiring to import more than $100m worth of cocaine into the US.

Former Marine Paul Whelan, who was arrested in 2018 on espionage charges, and WNBA star Brittney Griner both still remain behind bars in Russia.