Convicted U.S. spy Whelan makes phone call from penitentiary infirmary - brother

MOSCOW. Dec 2 (Interfax) - Paul Whelan, a United States citizen convicted for spying in Russia, has called his family from a penitentiary infirmary in Mordovia after his relatives and U.S. diplomats had been unable to get in touch with him for some time, Paul's brother David Whelan told Interfax.

"Paul said he'd been given a 'special dispensation' to phone home, so we know it wasn't a technical issue about the phone calls; he had been prohibited for some reason," David Whelan said.

Paul Whelan is at a penitentiary infirmary, he did not explain why he had been placed there, but promised to call again later, David said.

David Whelan thanked the Mordovian Public Monitoring Commission for the fact that its members inspected the conditions in which his brother is being held and assumed that he was allowed to call home after a human rights activist's visit.

Mordovian Public Monitoring Commission head Alexei Tyurkin told Interfax earlier on Friday that Paul Whelan was receiving scheduled treatment at Infirmary No. 3 in the community of Barashevo. "It will be over soon," he said.

David Whelan had said earlier that he had been informed that his brother had been transferred to a penitentiary infirmary on November 17, a day after he had been visited by U.S. and Irish diplomats.

The Moscow City Court sentenced Paul Whelan, a citizen of the United States, Ireland and Canada and a British national, to 16 years of incarceration on espionage counts on June 15, 2020. He is serving time in High-Security Penitentiary No. 17 in Mordovia.

Lately, Whelan has been repeatedly mentioned in the context of a possible prisoner swap between Russia and the United States.