Hopes of early freedom fade for basketball star Britney Griner. The Russian prison authorities are transferring her from the preventive detention center where she has been in the last eight months to a penal colony where she has to serve the 9 years in prison that a Russian court imposed on her last August for carrying two cartridges of vapor of hash oil.
The transfer began on November 4, but his lawyers had no knowledge of him until now. Russian authorities notify prison changes by regular mail. "We do not have any information on the exact location or on his final destination," his lawyers, Maria Blagovólina and Alexánder Bóikov, said in a statement.
Brittney Griner, star of the WNBA (the United States women's professional league), "was sent on November 4 from the detention center, where she had been since the moment of her arrest, to a general regime colony to serve his sentence," they detailed. The defense and the US embassy in Moscow must be notified when the athlete arrives at her destination.
The Phoenix Mercury player, who took advantage of the end of the season in the US to play for UMMC since 2015, was arrested in February at the Sheremétevo international airport, near Moscow. Border police found drugs in her hand luggage. The Russian Customs Service said that it was a liquid with hashish oil in vaping cartridges.
Griner pleaded guilty in court in the city of Khimki, on the outskirts of Moscow, on July 7. On August 4, the American was sentenced to new years in prison in the general regime for a case of drug smuggling.
Her lawyer argued that in the state of Arizona, the basketball player had received permission to use medical cannabis to relieve her chronic pain. But that didn't change her strict sentence. On October 25, the Russian judges dismissed the appeal filed by the defense.
That Griner was arrested on February 17, on the eve of the start of the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine (February 24), has turned her case into a pulse between Moscow and Washington, the main supporter of the Ukrainian government.
In the United States, it has sparked outrage. After receiving the sentence in August, the US president, Joe Biden, assured that "Russia improperly detained Brittney". According to Biden, "it is unacceptable and I demand that Russia immediately release her so that she can return to her wife, her loved ones and her companions."
Washington proposed to Moscow an exchange of prisoners that included Griner and former Marine Paul Whelan, detained in Russia and sentenced in 2020 to 16 years in prison for espionage. The United States has offered to hand over Viktor But (or Bout), known as "the merchant of death" for supplying weapons to terrorists around the world. Arrested in Bangkok (Thailand) in 2008, he was extradited to the US in 2010 and sentenced in 2012 to 25 years in prison. But Moscow wanted Vadim Krásikov to return to Russia, imprisoned in Germany for shooting a Chechen opponent in 2019. Being a blood crime and being in another country, the negotiation seems stopped.
Britney Griner, 32, has won the Olympic Games twice (in 2016 and 2020) and the world championship twice (in 2014 and 2018).
