After Russia Ordeal, U.S. Businessman Is Back Home

After eight months fighting spying charges in a Russian prison and a final 24 hours on the road, a tired but relieved Edmond Pope was back in his parents’ home on Monday.

“This is the best [Christmas] I have ever had,” Pope said.

With just half an hour of sleep after a 20-hour flight from Germany and a four-hour drive from Portland International Airport, Pope said he had spent all of Sunday night catching up with his wife, Cheri.

After his first breakfast of scrambled eggs since his April arrest in Moscow, Pope said on Monday he had been too excited to sleep and praised his wife, whose pleas on his behalf, he says, saved his life.

“She got the attention in the government, and most important in the public, that got me free,” Pope said.

A “Welcome Home” banner on the front porch and red ribbons on the garage greeted Pope at his parents’ home in a quiet residential neighborhood of this town of 23,000 in southern Oregon, where he grew up.

Inside the house, where his family had prepared a Christmas tree and holiday stockings, Pope said his first concern was to spend the day with his 76-year-old father, Roy, who is dying of a rare form of bone cancer, and his mother, Elizabeth, 80, as well as his wife and a sister.

A retired U.S. Navy officer, Pope was the first American convicted of espionage in Russia since U-2 spy pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down in 1960.

A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir V. Putin said Pope was pardoned on humanitarian grounds and to preserve good relations with Washington.