“During 20 years of work in the Estonian security police service, Dressen obtained and delivered to Moscow a colossal amount of valuable documents regarding secret operations of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the British MI6 against Russian Federation from the position of the Baltic countries”, he said.
Advertisement
Interior Minister Hanno Pevkur confirmed Kohver is back in Estonia.
He was found guilty of giving classified information to Russian Federation for years following Estonia’s 1999 independence and was sentenced to 16 years for treason.
Kohver’s conviction on August 19 drew global fury after Tallinn said he was kidnapped at gunpoint from Estonian territory, with Washington demanding that Moscow set him free immediately.
Estonian Eston Kohver was handed over by the Russians in return for Alexei Dressen, also an Estonian, who was imprisoned in Estonia for spying in 2012.
The exchange took place at a bridge over the Piusa river in a remote forested border post. Estonia, which joined North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in 2004, recently announced plans to erect a fence along part of its 294km (183 miles) border with Russian Federation.
Kohver’s defense lawyer, Mark Feigin, said that the swap was “organized on the political level” and was timed to improve Putin’s image before his appearance at the UN.
In a tweet, Feigin wrote: “It’s all happening ahead of Putin’s visit to the United Nations tomorrow”. “There are no other reasons”.
Estonian Prime Minister Taavi Roivas, who turned 36 on Saturday, said the phone call from Pevkur on the release of Kohver was “the best birthday present he could have imagined”.
“There would be an exchange when Eston Kohver would come home and someone would be released from an Estonian prison”.
Kohver’s case sparked a diplomatic row.
It was a scene reminiscent of the Cold War. Dressen’s wife, who received a suspended sentence in 2012 for aiding her husband, arrived in Russian Federation earlier, Interfax reported.
Advertisement
Saturday’s swap followed a deterioration in relations between the two countries, which have also been strained by Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea.
