Fogel’s case bears a striking similarity to Griner’s, which has captured national headlines since the WNBA star was detained in Russia in February 2022. Like Griner, Fogel — a 61-year-old history teacher from Pennsylvania who lived in Russia while teaching at the Anglo-American School in Moscow — was taken into custody by Russian authorities in August 2021 after customs officials at a Russian airport discovered around half an ounce of medical marijuana stashed in his luggage. The drugs had been prescribed to him by doctors in the U.S. to help treat chronic pain stemming from a series of injuries and operations, but Fogel’s reasons didn’t matter. Ten months later, in June 2022, a Russian court convicted him of drug trafficking charges and sentenced him to 14 years in prison. In October, Fogel was transferred from a Moscow detention center to one of Russia’s notorious penal colonies, where he is slated to serve the remainder of his sentence.

But if the facts of Fogel’s case closely resemble those of Griner’s, the public response to the two cases has been dramatically different. Coming in the weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Griner’s arrest sparked an international outcry, with many observers arguing that Griner had been taken as a bargaining chip in Russia’s increasingly tense confrontation with the United States. In May, the State Department determined that Griner was being “wrongfully detained,” a designation that established the legal basis for her release this week in a one-for-one prisoner exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.

Fogel, by contrast, has garnered little public attention. The State Department has not granted him “wrongfully detained” status, despite repeated appeals from a bipartisan group of lawmakers and Fogel’s lawyers.