International Deals: From the Cold War to today: When prisoners are exchanged

When you think of prisoner exchanges, you can hardly ignore the Cold War era. But even after that, there were still spectacular handovers. A selection of spectacular cases:

Cold War: Trades between Western and Eastern powers

The first major exchange of agents between West and East took place on February 10, 1962 on the Glienicke Bridge between West Berlin and Potsdam. Gary Powers, a US pilot, was allowed to cross the border. Shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960, he managed to escape by parachute. He was sentenced to ten years in prison. In return, top Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, who had been captured in the USA, was allowed to cross the bridge. Over two decades later, the largest exchange of agents in the Cold War took place: on June 11, 1985, 25 CIA spies who had been exposed in the GDR moved to West Berlin. In return, the Western Allies handed over four Eastern agents. In the third and final exchange of agents on the Glienicke Bridge on February 11, 1986, four prisoners in the West and five in the East crossed the river border, including the Soviet civil rights activist Nathan Sharansky, for whose release the USA had pushed.

GDR spy Günter Guillaume returned to the East in October 1981 as part of an agent exchange. His exposure and arrest at the end of April 1974 led to the resignation of Chancellor Willy Brandt a few weeks later. Guillaume, who was Brandt’s personal advisor from 1972 to 1974, had to serve less than half of the 13-year prison sentence imposed in 1975. In the headlines at the beginning of October 1981, the handover was described as the “biggest swap” between the Federal Republic and the GDR.

Hamas leader, Hezbollah, Israeli soldier: Exchanges in the Middle East

At the beginning of October 1997, the seriously ill Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin, who had been released by Israel, returned to Gaza. However, Israel only agreed to the flight because Jordan released two Mossad agents. In exchange for the agents, another 22 Palestinian prisoners were released.

The largest prisoner exchange in the Middle East conflict in two decades was successfully concluded under German mediation at the end of January 2004. At Cologne-Bonn airport, Israeli envoys took over the kidnapped businessman Elchanan Tennenboim and the bodies of three Israeli soldiers from the Lebanese Hezbollah militia.

In exchange, a German Air Force Airbus brings about 30 Arabs released by Israel to Beirut, including the guerrilla leaders Sheikh Abdel Karim Obeid and Mustafa Dirani, as well as the German Steven Smyrek. At the same time, Israel releases more than 400 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and hands over the bodies of about 60 Hezbollah fighters.

A few years later, the case of Gilad Shalit was also spectacular, ending with his release on October 18, 2011. After more than five years of negotiations, Israel and the Islamist Hamas agreed to a comprehensive prisoner exchange. The Israeli soldier Shalit, who was kidnapped in June 2006, was allowed to go – in exchange for a total of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners.

From espionage scandals to cannabis cartridges: Russia and the USA

Even after the fall of the Iron Curtain, there were spectacular prisoner exchanges between the USA and Russia: On June 28, 2010, American investigators uncovered a network of agents who were said to have spied for Russia in the USA. Since the 1990s, they are said to have recruited informants and collected information for Moscow. On July 9, the ten arrested spies were deported to Russia, and Moscow released four people in return. To date, it is considered the largest exchange of agents since the end of the Cold War.

On November 11, 2010, Russian media revealed that the head of the US Department C of the Russian foreign intelligence service SVR, Colonel Shcherbakov, had betrayed the spies. Around six months later, a Moscow court sentenced him in absentia to 25 years in prison because he had revealed the names of twelve Russian spies to the Americans – including Anna Chapman, who was described as a master spy.

The Brittany Griner case also caused a media stir: Shortly before the start of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, the US basketball player was arrested for drug possession upon her arrival at Moscow airport in February 2022. When checking her luggage, customs authorities in Moscow found so-called vape cartridges containing cannabis oil. As a result, the two-time Olympic champion is to be imprisoned for nine years. After almost ten months in captivity and months of negotiations between Moscow and Washington, Griner will be released in December 2022 as part of an exchange for the Russian arms dealer Viktor Brut, who is imprisoned in the USA.