Relatives of ex-Marine Robert Gilman feared he was dying in a Russian psychiatric ward. This week, he boarded a plane for home.

Robert Gilman, a thirty-two-year-old former U.S. Marine, has been released from a Russian penal colony after Vladimir Putin granted him a pardon on humanitarian grounds. According to Meduza, Gilman's family had grown increasingly alarmed in recent months, saying he had been tortured, injected with mind-altering drugs, and left in a dissociative stupor since June, at one point fed through a tube. Washington pressed Moscow on August seventh to let him return home for treatment, and on August eleventh he boarded a State Department plane bound for Washington Dulles Airport, with one source saying he was seen walking and talking. Gilman was among at least ten Americans held in Russia, and had previously appeared on a list of citizens Washington sought to bring home as part of a possible prisoner exchange.

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