Lawmakers to State Dept.: Bring Marc Fogel home
Pittsburgh-area native being held in Russian prison
WASHINGTON — Many people carry the lasting lessons that Marc Fogel taught them.
The international educator is described by family and friends as a person who brought ideas to life, connected people to one another, and received the world and its many cultures with curiosity and compassion.
“He is a really kind soul, really energetic and has a knack for turning the most dry subject into an engaging story,” said Varad Kishore, who was a student of Mr. Fogel’s in 2006 in Muscat, Oman. “On a personal level, you know, he helped me believe in myself at a time when I lacked that.”
Now Mr. Kishore and others agonize from afar as they know their beloved former history teacher, colleague, husband, father, uncle and friend remains imprisoned in Russia — and being processed into a hard-labor penal colony, according to family.
On Monday, Mr. Kishore, 32, will travel from New York City to Washington to demonstrate outside the White House and urge the Biden administration to grant Mr. Fogel a special “wrongfully detained” status that would escalate negotiations for his release.
“He is someone who deserves to retire with dignity, and we need to do everything we can to get the story out there and bring him home,” Mr. Kishore said.
Mr. Fogel, a Western Pennsylvania native who
turned 61 in July and who suffers severe and chronic back pain, has been held in Russia for nearly 14 months.
He was detained at the Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow in August 2021, accused of possessing about 20 grams of medical marijuana.
Mr. Fogel had been en route to the Anglo-American School in Moscow, where he had taught high school history for close to a decade. He planned to teach a final year before returning to Oakmont.
In June, he was found guilty of “large-scale drugs smuggling”and sentenced to 14 years in a high-security penal colony.
Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Peters, calls the sentence “highly disproportional” compared to what a local would receive for the crime, and says that’s just one of many reasons he believes Mr. Fogel’s sentence is politically motivated.
The lawmaker was one of several members of Congress who participated in an early October phone call with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, urging officials to designate Mr. Fogel as “detained unlawfully or wrongfully” under the Levinson Act.
The act, named for former FBI agent Robert Levinson. who was unlawfully imprisoned in Iran and presumably died in custody in 2020, lists multiple criteria the State Department can weigh when reviewing cases of those imprisoned abroad.
“The call [with State] did not go well, in my perspective,” Mr. Reschenthaler said. “They were telling us that it’s a very hard determination under Levinson. That is nonsense. I mean, I can name six out of the 11 [criteria]. For one, Fogel is being detained substantially because he’s a U.S. citizen. Fogel is being detained so the
Russians can have an influence on U.S. foreign policy — that’s another one.”
The Russian government imposed its sentence on Mr. Fogel as the detention of two other Americans — including WNBA star Brittney Griner and former Marine Paul Whelan -- received headlines while the U.S. engaged in talks about a prisoner swap.
“There’s just an unwillingness to expedite Fogel,” Mr. Reschenthaler said. “I would have to assume that’s because unlike Whelan, Fogel isn’t a former service member. Unlike Griner, he’s not a celebrity basketball player. He’s just an average Joe history teacher from Pittsburgh ... [but] he’s an American citizen, he should be declared wrongfully detained and he should be included in this prisoner swap.”
Other lawmakers on the call included Reps. Mike Kelly, R-Butler; Mike
Turner, an Ohio Republican and ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee; and Steve Cohen, a Tennessee Democrat who serves as the special representative for political prisoners on the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Mr. Cohen called Mr. Fogel’s detention “an absurd situation.”
Lawmakers from both parties and both chambers signed correspondence over the summer led by Mr. Reschenthaler and Sens. Bob Casey, D-Pa., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa., to the Biden administration urging a “wrongful detention” determination.
Mr. Casey, who serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has not received a response to his letter but continues to reach out to highlevel Department of State and national security officials to try to elevate the situation, according to his office.
Administration officials say the Department of State continuously reviews the circumstances surrounding U.S. nationals detained overseas.
“There is no higher priority for the department than the welfare of U.S. citizens,” a Department of State spokesperson said in a statement Thursday. “The deputy secretary reached out to speak with several members of Congress to hear their concerns directly, and the department continues to be responsive to their inquiries.”
“The wrongful detention designation process is a factbased and law-based process, and that process is ongoing in this case,” the statement continued.
Meanwhile, family members, friends and lawmakers fighting on his behalf worry about Mr. Fogel’s health and what a sentence of hard labor means for a man in his 60s who has undergone multiple surgeries.
“He’s had a hip replacement, three spinal surgeries, knee surgery. He’s had that pain ever since he was in his 30s. Things have just progressed, but he never gave up,” said Sarah Grubbs, of Butler, Mr. Fogel’s niece.
Ms. Grubbs described her uncle as an “exemplary person” who traveled the world to teach history, someone she “looked up to.” In 2014 she visited him and her aunt Jane Fogel in Russia and toured Moscow and St. Petersburg.
“It’s a beautiful country, we had a really good time touring different sites,” said Ms. Grubbs, 34. “You know, they loved teaching there. They loved working there. They loved the people, they loved where they lived.”
While Russia was their latest post, Mr. Fogel and his wife taught for 35 years across the globe, including in Malaysia, Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela, as well as in Oman.
Kamakshi Balasubramanian, 73, who worked with Mr. Fogel at the American British Academy in Oman, said she credits him with bringing the Model U.N. program to the school.
Ms. Balasubramanian, who spoke to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Mysore, India, said she also remembers that when Mr. Fogel returned to the U.S. to teach at Shadyside’s Winchester Thurston School, he took pains to make sure his American students were able to build relationships with other cultures abroad.
“I have many vivid memories of the man,” she said. “His affection, his loyalty, his passion and commitment to teaching in a positive way — never with a stick and never for rewards, except for the reward of learning.”