On Aug. 13, 2021, Marc and Jane Fogel pulled away from their white colonial style home where they’d lived on and off for 15 years in between international teaching assignments, to make the drive to New York City.
There, they’d board a plane bound for Moscow to begin their tenth and final year teaching at the Anglo American School, an elite educational institution for the children of American, British and Canadian diplomats.
But when they landed at Sheremetyevo Airport in Russia, 60-year-old Fogel was arrested and ultimately charged with smuggling marijuana.
He had with him less than 20 grams, which had been prescribed to him by his doctor in Pittsburgh.
So began an excruciating ordeal that kept him in Russian custody — at local jails they call Sizos, on trains they call stolypin or the “strict regime” penal colony at Rybinsk — for 1,277 days.
On Feb. 11, the U.S. government, under the leadership of newly elected President Donald Trump, secured Fogel’s release.
In his first interviews since returning home last year, Fogel sat down with TribLive over several hours to describe his experiences during those 3 1/2 years and what it’s been like adjusting to his life now.
These stories were written based on those interviews, reviews of Russian court documents, interviews with Fogel’s lawyers, translator, wife and friends as well as government officials.