Family, colleagues congratulate Aleksei Dressen on his return to Russia, birthday
MOSCOW. Sept 27 (Interfax) - Russian intelligence officers attended a friendly lunch with the family of their colleague Aleksei Dressen, who returned to Moscow on Saturday.
"On Sunday, the Dressen family held a friendly lunch in Moscow, which, apart from Aleksei, his wife and children, was attended by Russian intelligence officers who devised and implemented the operation for his release," a source in intelligence agencies told Interfax on Sunday.
At the meeting Dressen received congratulations not only on his return to Russia but also on his birthday: on Sunday he turned 49, the source said.
It was reported that Estonia and Russia swapped Dressen for Estonian security police officer Eston Kohver last Saturday.
On September 5, 2014, Russian security officers arrested Kohver in possession of a gun and a large amount of cash on the Estonian-Russian border. The following day a Moscow court ordered his detention on espionage charges. Later he faced new charges of illegal border crossing and firearm possession and smuggling. On August 19, 2015, Pskov Regional Court sentenced Kohver to 15 years of imprisonment.
Former security police officer Dressen was convicted in Estonia in July 2012 for state treason (spying for Russia) and sentenced to 16 years of imprisonment; his wife Viktoria got a six-year suspended sentence for abetting.
She came back to Moscow earlier.