Kohver, an officer when using the Estonian Internal Security Service, was at demanded to effectively 15 existence in penal complex on August 19 with a closed-door burden once convicted of spying and explicitly queering the Russian outer edge.
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Reminsicent of a Cold War thriller, the exchange of prisoners took place at a bridge over a river on the Russian-Estonian border, according to a statement by Russia’s Federal Security Service.
He added that it was “good to be back in my homeland”.
The exchange was made possible after Putin wrote a pardon for Kohver, while Ilves pardoned Dressen, Estonian Interior Minister Hanno Pevkur said, calling Kohver a “very strong man”. He was found guilty of treason for funnelling classified information to Russian Federation for years after Estonia’s 1991 independence. Russian Federation had said he was detained on its side of the border with Estonia.
Mr Kohver was carrying out undercover operations against cross border smuggling and fraud when he was arrested by Russian security agents last on September 5, 2014.
Kohver’s defense lawyer, Mark Feigin, said the swap was “organized on the political level” and was timed to boost Russia’s image ahead of President Vladimir Putin’s speech to the UN General Assembly on September 28. Kohver thanked “all the authorities who helped me get back to Estonia, who helped me to, so to say, endure in prison”.
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Saturday’s swap follows a deterioration of relations, which have also been strained by Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea. A suspended sentence with a five-year probation period was given to his wife Victoria Dressen who was helping her husband and was detained in the Tallinn airport with electronic media containing secret data before taking a flight to Moscow.
