FREE JIMMY WILGUS

For more than 7 years we have been pleading with the State Department, and various legislators for their support, to classify our son James (aka Jimmy) Vincent Wilgus as wrongfully detained.

Our request was based on Jimmy being sentenced for a crime he did not commit. This has been a long and frustrating struggle with our own government, which is unconscionable, since Jimmy, and his family, are patriotic, law-abiding American citizens, and whose father and grandfather served in the U.S. military.

After 7 years of abusive incarceration, the reason for Jimmy being detained in a Russian Labor Camp is overshadowed by the inhumane treatment he has received. The violations inflicted against Jimmy, which are described in the Levinson Act, take precedence over any accusations created by the Russian judicial system. It’s time to enforce American law.

Since the U.S. Congress passed the Robert Levinson Hostage-Taking Accountability Act in 2020, we have pleaded with Sec. Blinken and Sec. Rubio to enforce the Act and negotiate the release of Jimmy from Russian custody. This is now a law that allows the use of U.S. Government resources to bring back Americans held hostage who are wrongfully or unlawfully detained abroad. Section 2 of the Act establishes guidelines to assist the Secretary of State to determine which prisoners qualify. It's our belief that several guidelines in Section 2 apply to all Americans in Russian prisons, especially Jimmy, who also has medical issues.

To be specific, we call your attention to Item 8, which clearly provides justification to classify an American as unlawfully detained, “The individual is detained in a country where the Department of State has determined in its annual human rights reports that the judicial system is not independent or impartial, is susceptible to corruption, or is incapable of rendering just verdicts”.

In March 2023, the State Department released its annual report on human rights violations for the year 2022. An excerpt is as follows:

“It is important to note that human rights violations are a regular feature of many of the camps in Russia, according to the U.S. State Department, human rights groups, and others who have maintained regular contact with prisoners in Russia. Physical and sexual abuse by prison guards is systemic, and torture of prisoners is pervasive, at times resulting in death or suicide”.

Further, on May 18, 2023, Former Deputy Secretary of State and U. S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation, Jake Sullivan (2020-2022), stated the following in Senate hearings of the Foreign Relations Committee:

"...it's a Potemkin court, it is used by the Russian security services and the Kremlin to achieve their policy. There is no justice, there’s no independent judiciary.”

Based on these reports, we question why the Secretary of State is reluctant to classify all Americans in Russian prisons as unlawfully detained?

As further justification, we refer to Item 9 which states, “The individual is being detained in inhumane conditions.”, and Item 10, “Due process of law has been sufficiently impaired so as to render the detention arbitrary.”

For the reasons noted above, we ask that advocates for Jimmy focus on the Secretary of State to implement the Levinson Act and the justifiable classification of “unlawfully detained” for Jimmy Wilgus and all Americans detained in Russia.