A 58-year-old Navy veteran has been sentenced to five years in a Russian prison after authorities reportedly found a pistol on board his boat after it docket at the Black Sea port of Sochi. Chuck Zimmerman's family, however, says he was basically kidnapped by Russian authorities in international waters and forced him to shore, where they discovered the pistol after boarding his yacht.
Zimmerman's family says he was on his way from North Carolina to New Zealand to meet a woman he'd been talking to online, though he apparently was making a few side trips along the way, since the Black Sea is nowhere near the course he'd take if he was sailing directly to New Zealand.
Zimmerman had been reported missing by the U.S. government in September, 2024, but it wasn't until this week that a Russian court released records showing that he'd been convicted of illegally possessing a firearm and sentenced to five years in prison last October after being detained in July.
Zimmerman’s sister, Robin Stultz, claimed that her brother was wrongfully detained in Russia, saying that Russian authorities forced him to pilot his vessel to Sochi from international waters, according to the AP.
He was "sailing in international waters when he was intercepted by the Russian Navy and forced to motor 22 hours to Sochi," Stultz added in a statement to CBS News.
Zimmerman reportedly disclosed his weapons but was charged anyway, Stultz said, claiming that his arrest was a strategic move by Russia to use him as leverage in a potential U.S. exchange.
"He was sailing from the U.S. to New Zealand, so of course, he had a firearm on board," she told the AP in a statement. "You can’t just call 911 if something goes wrong out at sea. He voluntarily disclosed it to them and they charged him with arms smuggling. This is an obvious set-up to get another American they can trade. He needs to be declared wrongfully detained."
His sister added that she "wouldn't trust any 'confession' the Russians claim he's given," and alleged that Russian authorities had denied her brother access to U.S. diplomatic representatives since his arrest.
As Fox News reports, since Russia invaded Ukraine nearly four years ago, dozens of Westerners, including multiple U.S. citizens have been detained by the Putin government, "with many later released in prisoner exchanges."
It wouldn't surprise me one bit if Mr. Zimmerman is just the latest American to be detained for political purposes, and I agree with Stultz that the U.S. government should declare him to be unlawfully detained. Russia's gun control laws are no joke, but it sounds like there are legitimate questions about whether Zimmerman docked at Sochi of his own free will or whether he was essentially pirated there by Russian authorities.
Whether or not the Trump administration wants to pick a fight with Putin over Zimmerman's prison sentence remains to be seen, but at the very least I hope the State Department and Marco Rubio push for him to be provided access to U.S. diplomats who can check on his health, hear his side of the story, and potentially help plead his case and get him back on U.S. soil where his right to keep and bear arms exists.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights, potentially turning us all into Chuck Zimmermans.
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