The Maine woman whose husband has been imprisoned in a Russian jail since he was arrested in September said she is relieved that the piracy charges have been dropped, but says the possibility that her husband could be held in Russian prison on the lesser charge of hooliganism seems unreal to her.

“I could say that I am cautiously optimistic but we still have a long way to go before we are in the clear,” Maggy Willcox said Wednesday in a telephone interview.

Willcox lives on Islesboro and serves as editor and publisher of the Islesboro Island News. She and her husband, 60-year-old Greenpeace activist Peter Willcox, were married in February. They live apart for some of the time, caring for their elderly parents in Maine and at Peter Willcox’s home in Norwalk, Connecticut.

Willcox said she spoke to her husband by telephone for the first time on Monday. The conversation lasted only five minutes but Willcox said her husband seemed to be in fairly good spirits.

“He is doing pushups in his cell every day and he has been taken out of his cell to visit his boat,” she said. “All things considered he sounded good. And it was good to hear his voice.”

Willcox said she had grown concerned because her husband, the captain of the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise, suffers from high blood pressure and was running low on his supplies. She has been assured that his medicine will be refilled.


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