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Brittney Griner: US Olympic Basketball Star Appears in Russian Court on Drug Charges as Trial Date Set

American basketball star Brittney Griner was ordered to stand trial in Russia on Friday on cannabis possession charges.

The 31-year-old double Olympic gold star and Phoenix Mercury appeared at a brief hearing on Monday more than four months after he was arrested at a Moscow airport where he was allegedly carrying several cartridges of cannabis oil.

She could face 10 years in prison if convicted of large-scale drug transportation charges.

Less than 1% of defendants in Russian criminal cases are acquitted, and acquittals can be overturned.

At Monday’s closed-door preliminary hearing at the court in the Moscow suburb of Khimki, Griner’s detention was extended by at least six months.

Photographs of Griner being escorted into the courtroom show the star in handcuffs.

She was arrested at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport less than a week before Russia sent troops to Ukraine, straining tensions between the United States and Russia.

US officials have said Griner is being “wrongfully detained.”

She was at the airport to board a flight back to Phoenix at the start of WNBA training camp.

Griner, like other WNBA players, has spent several off seasons playing professionally in Russia due to higher salaries.

Amid the tensions, Griner’s supporters had lain low in the hope of a quiet resolution, until May, when the US State Department reclassified her as wrongfully detained and transferred oversight of her case to its special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, actually the US government’s chief negotiator.

That move has drawn further attention to the Griner case, with supporters cheering for a prisoner swap like the one in April that brought home Navy veteran Trevor Reed for a Russian pilot convicted of drug conspiracy.

Last month, US President Joe Biden’s press secretary said tension with the Kremlin presents challenges to any attempt to negotiate Griner’s release.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said he has “no higher priority than making sure that Americans who are unlawfully detained in one way or another around the world come home.”

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