Come home for Christmas. The old nougat motto comes true with Brittney Griner. The American basketball star will return to her country, freed from the Russian penal colony in which she was locked up for alleged cannabis trafficking, after the Biden administration has reached an exchange agreement with arms dealer Viktor Bout.
Biden signed the agreement, which was negotiated in the United Arab Emirates, although this means that executive Paul Whelan will continue to be detained in Russia, accused of such irrelevant charges as Griner, who was convicted of possessing few grams of marijuana.
This pact marks the highest profile exchange between Washington and Moscow since the end of the Cold War. Bout has served eleven years of the 25-year sentence imposed on him in the US.
The return home of Griner, sentenced to nine years in prison, closes an adventure of several months, which began in February, shortly before President Vladimir Putin ordered the military invasion of Ukraine. She was detained at the Moscow airport, with some cartridges of marijuana oil to vape in her luggage.
Griner, 32, a star of the Phoenix Mercurt and who also played in the Russian competition, has been the subject of a long negotiation that has highlighted the tense relationship between the two countries.
On November 9, Biden promised that Griner would be back with his people soon.
“These nine months have been the darkest of my life, and I am here now overwhelmed with emotion, but the most important emotion I have right now is gratitude to President Joe Biden and his entire administration,” said Cherelle Griner, Brittney's wife in an appearance held this Thursday morning at the White House. President and Vice President Kamala Harris were next to her.
"I can only say that this work has not been easy and has involved many," he said. But he regretted that there are many other families that "cannot be whole and, on Brittney's behalf, he assured you that we remain committed to the work of bringing all Americans home, including Paul (Whelan)," she stressed.
Cherelle uttered these words after Biden had just finished the announcement that he had spoken with Brittney. "She is on the plane, back home," the president stressed.
"After months of being wrongfully detained in Russia, held under intolerable circumstances, Brittney will soon be home in the arms of her loved ones, where she should always have been," the president said.
He thanked his team and the Emirates for the effort made. “This is a day we have worked for a long time,” he insisted. “We never stopped fighting for his release and this involved painful and intense negotiations,” he added.
He explained that from the conversation he had had with the athlete, a two-time Olympic gold medalist with the United States team, he certified that he was in good spirits and asked that he be given space and time to recover from this blow. "with dignity". “It represents the best of this country,” she said.
And he remarked that "we have never forgotten Paul Whelan, who has also been unjustly detained in Russia for years," he clarified. He qualified that, unlike the athlete, the same fate has not been enjoyed with the executive, but "we are not going to leave him," he promised, with the reminder that his administration has brought back "dozens of improperly detained Americans and held hostage in Russia and elsewhere."
He concluded by urging all his compatriots to take precautions when traveling abroad and to pay attention to the State Department's instructions on the risks of each specific journey.
Russia also celebrated Bout's release. His Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, said in a statement that the exchange had been carried out "successfully" at the Abu Dhabi airport. "He can finally return to his home," he said of the convicted arms dealer known as "the merchant of death."
At 55, Bout, a former Soviet army officer, at the time the most wanted man in the world, was serving a sentence in Marion (Illinois) prison, in a restrictive unit known as "little Guantanamo."
Characterized by his mustache, capable of speaking six languages, he was sentenced, after his arrest in Bangkok in 2008 and extradition in 2010, for selling weapons to Al Qaeda, the Taliban and rebel and terrorist groups that fueled conflicts in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and South America, as well as for conspiring to kill Americans.
Bout was seen as the builder of a global arms smuggling empire. The 2005 film Lord of War, starring Nicholas Cage, was inspired by him.
