U.S. citizen Reed transferred to penitentiary infirmary - lawyer

MOSCOW. April 4 (Interfax) - U.S. citizen Trevor Reed, convicted in Russia of an attack on police officers, has been moved to a penitentiary infirmary in Mordovia after he went on a hunger strike, Reed's lawyers said on Monday.

"Trevor Reed has been moved to a penitentiary infirmary. Reed has lost weight over the period of the hunger strike," lawyers Sergei Nikitenkov and Viktoria Buklova told Interfax.

It was reported last week that Reed went on hunger strike in disagreement with a reprimand.

For its part, the regional branch of the Federal Penitentiary Service has told Interfax that Reed, currently on hunger strike at a Mordovia penitentiary, is in satisfactory condition.

The Reed family said he went on hunger strike because of suspected contraction of tuberculosis and his transfer to a punitive isolation ward.

Reed previously went on hunger strike in November 2021. The Mordovia branch of the Federal Penitentiary Service said back then that he did not inform the penitentiary administration about the hunger strike and continued to eat as usual.

On July 30, 2020, the Golovinsky District Court of Moscow sentenced Reed to nine years in a general security penitentiary on charges of using violence against law enforcement officers. The court also ordered that Reed pay 100,000 rubles in moral damages to the two aggrieved police officers.

The Moscow City Court upheld Reed's sentence on July 28, 2021.

According to the court filings, the police received a report saying that a man was arguing aggressively with two women near 106, Leningradskoye Highway in Moscow on August 16, 2019. Police officers arrived at the scene and tried to calm the man down, but he began behaving aggressively and resisted them.

The officers had to force the man into a police car and then took him to the Levoberezhny police station. On the way there, Reed assaulted the driver, tore his uniform, hit his colleague, and provoked a dangerous traffic situation.

Once at the police station, the man was identified as Trevor Reed, a 28-year-old student born in Texas, the United States, who was living temporarily in an apartment on Otkrytoye Highway in Moscow. A court ordered his arrest the next day.

When speaking in court, Reed pleaded not guilty and claimed that he did not remember the incident, as he was drunk at the time.

U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Moscow and Washington were discussing the Reed case at the highest level and noted the need for his release from custody.

U.S. diplomats and Reed's lawyers said in February that the U.S. citizen might have contracted tuberculosis.