Family pleads for release of Texas father held in Russia following custody battle

A Texas man who has spent more than five months in a Russian detention center is facing a different challenge from other recent American detainees such as Trevor Reed and Brittney Griner, as authorities in Moscow are accusing him of wrongdoing in his home country.

David Barnes, a Huntsville, Alabama, native who has lived in the Houston area in recent years, was taken into custody by law enforcement in Moscow in January and has been incarcerated on Russian soil ever since.

"If I could go over there and just sit in that place with him, I would do it in a minute, because this is the most unjust situation I've ever experienced in my entire life," Carol Barnes, David's older sister, told ABC News. "I feel like part of me is missing."