Lawyers for American basketball star Brittney Griner on Monday filed an appeal against her nine-year prison sentence in Russia for drug possession, Russian news agencies reported on Monday.
Griner, a Phoenix Mercury center and two-time Olympic gold medalist, was sentenced Aug. 4. She was arrested in February at Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow after vaping cartridges containing cannabis oil were found in her luggage.
Griner played for a women’s basketball team in Yekaterinburg during the WNBA offseason.
Lawyer Maria Blagovolina was quoted by Russian news agencies on Monday as saying the appeal had been filed, but the grounds for the appeal were not immediately clear.
Blagovolina and co-counsel Alexander Boykov said after the conviction that the sentence was excessive and that in similar cases defendants received an average sentence of about five years, of which about a third were granted parole.
Griner admitted she had the canisters in her luggage, but said she inadvertently hastily packed them and had no criminal intent. His defense team presented written statements that he was prescribed cannabis to treat the pain.
Discussions around the exchange of prisoners
Prior to her sentencing, the US State Department said Griner was “wrongfully detained.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken took the unusual step of publicly revealing in July that the United States had made a “substantial offer” to bring Griner home, along with Paul Whelan, a Canadian-born American serving a 16-year sentence in Russia for espionage.
Blinken did not give details, but the Associated Press and other news outlets reported that Washington had offered to free Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer who is serving a 25-year sentence in the United States and who once earned the nickname “The Merchant of Death.” .”
On Sunday, a senior Russian diplomat said swap talks had been held.
“This rather sensitive issue of the exchange of convicted Russian and American citizens is being discussed through the channels set by our presidents,” Alexander Darchiev, head of the North America department at the Foreign Ministry, told the agency. official Tass press release. “These individuals are indeed being discussed. The Russian side has long called for the release of Viktor Bout. The details should be left to the professionals, based on the ‘do no harm’ principle”.
