A Russian appeals court docket is due Tuesday to listen to the case of WNBA star Brittney Griner, sentenced to 9 years in jail in what the U.S. has referred to as a wrongful detention.
Griner, 32, “is kind of pessimistic in regards to the final result” of the enchantment, certainly one of her attorneys, Maria Blagovolina, mentioned Monday.
“She hopes there can be some discount however not that the decision can be overruled,” Blagovolina mentioned on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Studies.”
Griner, a two-time Olympic gold medalist who performs for the Phoenix Mercury, was sentenced in August to 9 years in jail on drug prices.
She was detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport in February, after Russian authorities mentioned they discovered vape canisters with hashish oil in her baggage.
Griner pleaded responsible in July however mentioned that it was an accident, that she had introduced them to Russia unintentionally and that she had packed hurriedly for a flight. Medical hashish, which is illegitimate in Russia, is authorized in a lot of the U.S.
U.S. officers say Griner is being wrongfully detained. State Division spokesman Ned Value referred to as the judicial proceedings “largely shambolic” Monday.
“Wrongful detainees are by definition wrongfully held. They’re used as political pawns, as leverage,” Value mentioned. “It’s our purpose to see them dwelling as quickly as we are able to.”
Griner’s spouse, Cherelle Griner, has mentioned Brittney Griner is being held hostage.
The U.S. has proposed a prisoner trade with Russia for the discharge of Griner and one other American, Paul Whelan, a company govt who has been detained there since 2018, two sources conversant in the matter mentioned. The deal would come with the U.S.’s releasing imprisoned Russian arms vendor Viktor Bout, the sources have mentioned.
When she was detained, Griner had been in Russia to play for a Russian Premier League girls’s workforce, UMMC Ekaterinburg, as she had finished since 2014.
Legal professionals for Griner filed an enchantment in August, after she was sentenced.
In April, Russia launched American Trevor Reed in trade for the U.S.’s releasing Russian drug trafficker Konstantin Yaroshenko, who had been sentenced to twenty years in jail.
Reed, a former Marine, was sentenced to 9 years in jail in Russia in 2020 after authorities there mentioned he assaulted a Russian police officer after an evening of ingesting. Reed and his household have maintained his innocence.
