VORONEZH, Russia (Reuters) – A Russian court on Monday sentenced U.S. citizen and former Marine Robert Gilman to seven years and one month in prison for assaulting a corrections officer and a state investigator, local prosecutors said.
Gilman, 30, is already serving a three-and-a-half-year sentence for attacking a police officer while intoxicated, a charge for which he was found guilty in October 2022.
Prosecutors in Voronezh, a city about 300 miles (500 kilometers) south of Moscow where Gilman is imprisoned, said he had attacked a prison employee and a state investigator on separate occasions in the fall of 2023.
Reuters could not immediately contact a lawyer for Gilman. The U.S. Embassy in Moscow did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Russia’s state news agency RIA said Gilman, whose lawyers had previously told state news agency TASS that he had come to Russia to study and obtain citizenship, had pleaded guilty to all charges.
RIA quoted Gilman as telling the court last week that he had been forced to use violence after the prison inspector caused pain to his genitals and after the investigator insulted his father.
Gilman is one of at least 10 U.S. citizens behind bars in Russia more than two months after a prisoner swap between Moscow and the West on Aug. 1 freed 24 people, including three Americans.