Sentenced to spend nine years in prison in Russia against the backdrop of the conflict in Ukraine, the star of American women’s basketball had appealed to request a reduction in sentence. His request was rejected by the Russian justice.
American basketball player Brittney Griner will not yet be able to return to the United States. Sentenced in Russia to nine years in prison for cannabis trafficking, the sportswoman had appealed last August. A request rejected by the Russian justice on Tuesday. She asked the court to reduce her sentence “traumatic”.
The court therefore decided to “leave unchanged” the verdict pronounced last August against the American basketball star, declared judge Elena Vorontsova, while specifying that justice would take into account the months already spent in prison by Brittney Griner, imprisoned since March, and count each day of this detention like a day and a half.
A worldwide arrest
As soon as the Russian decision was known, Washington condemned a legal procedure “can” and demanded the release of its national, says the White House National Security Advisor. “President Biden has been very clear that Brittney must be released immediately”said Jake Sullivan, regretting that she continues to be ‘wrongly imprisoned, under unacceptable circumstances, after having to endure yet another bogus legal proceeding today’.
Considered one of the best basketball players in the world, Brittney Griner, 31, was arrested in February in Moscow in possession of a vaporizer containing cannabis-based liquid. She admitted having been in possession of this substance, however claiming to have brought it to Russia inadvertently and to use it legally in the United States as a painkiller. She had come to Russia to play during the American offseason, a common practice for WNBA basketball players who often earn more money abroad than in the United States.
His case took on a geopolitical dimension in the context of the crisis between Moscow and Washington linked to the Russian offensive in Ukraine. The sportswoman is one of several American citizens currently detained in Russia and whose release Washington wants.
The United States has repeatedly declared that it has made a “substantial offer” to obtain the release of two of them: Brittney Griner, therefore, and a former American soldier, Paul Whelan. Russia would ask in exchange for the “merchant of death”, Viktor Bout, a famous Russian arms trafficker imprisoned across the Atlantic.
