Dokument #2021378
RFE/RL – Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (Autor)
The Moscow City Court has upheld a lower court's decision to release U.S. citizen Gaylen Grandstaff from custody until the Prosecutor-General's Office clarifies its arguments in the drug-smuggling case against him.
"The decision of the Solntsevo [district] court on March 18 remains unchanged," TASS quoted an appellate court judge as saying on December 9.
Grandstaff spent more than 600 days in jail after Russian Customs agents in July 2017 stormed the Moscow apartment he shares with his Russian wife as he took receipt of a $10 bottle of metal cleaner and peptides he had ordered online to help reduce inflammation resulting from Crohn's disease.
He was charged with smuggling a "large" amount of a psychotropic substance after Russian authorities determined that the metal cleaner contained gamma-butyrolactone (GBL), a common industrial solvent that can also be used as a recreational or athletic-performance enhancing drug.
The charges against Grandstaff are punishable by 10 years to 20 years in prison in Russia.
Grandstaff's trial and incarceration -- which he documented through a cartoon character called Bear -- attracted international media attention. In a series of cartoons he sent to his wife over two years, Bear described his situation as a judicial "circus" and shed light on harassment from guards, beatings by fellow inmates, and other mistreatment in jail.
From the onset of the trial, the defense said that Grandstaff's medical condition made his detention a violation of Russian law, that he had been denied adequate medical treatment for injuries he sustained in prison, and that fellow inmates had beaten him and made attempts on his life.
Copyright (c) 2010-2020. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.