Last week, Elizabeth Whelan of Chappaquiddick stood alongside President Joe Biden as he announced that after five years her brother Paul Whelan was finally coming home, part of a sweeping prisoner exchange.

Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine and brother to Island artist Elizabeth Whelan, has been released from Russian custody more than five years after an arrest that the U.S. government condemned as spurious.

Next week, in Mordovia, western Russia, in penal colony IK-17, American prisoner Paul Whelan will celebrate his 54th birthday. It will be the sixth birthday Mr. Whelan has spent behind bars since his arrest on espionage charges on a visit to Russia in 2018.

Russia and the U.S. exchanged Brittney Griner for arms dealer Viktor Bout Thursday. But conspicuously absent from the deal was Paul Whelan, the brother of an Island artist, who remains in Russia on espionage charges.