American basketball star Brittney Griner pleaded guilty to carrying cannabis oil on Thursday at a court in Khimki, a satellite city of Moscow, on the second day of a trial that could carry a sentence of up to 10 years in prison. As reported by Reuters, who had a reporter in the room, the Phoenix Mercury athlete told the judge through an interpreter: “I would like to plead guilty, your honor. But there was no intention. I didn’t want to break the law.” The American WNBA star is expected to expand on her testimony on July 14.
The case of Griner, 31, has gained notoriety in the United States this week. The player sent a letter to President Joe Biden on Monday in which she asked him not to forget about her case. The president responded to the letter with a call to Cherelle, Griner’s wife, to whom he promised that her government seeks the release “as soon as possible” of the athlete, winner of two Olympic golds for the US team.
Griner’s crime was trying to enter Russia with 0.702 grams of cannabis in e-cigarette cartridges. She was caught at a checkpoint at Sheremetyevo International Airport, where she had arrived to join the Yekaterinburg UMMC team as a player while the US league was on break. The arrest was on February 17, but it transpired until the beginning of March, a few days after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, on February 24, which placed her at the center of the deteriorated diplomatic relations between Moscow and Washington.
The deputy head of the US diplomatic mission in Russia, Elizabeth Rood, announced Thursday that she has given Griner a letter written by Biden to the athlete, and found that she is being properly cared for. “She said that she eats well, she can read books and, under these circumstances, she is fine,” she added.
The possibility of a future exchange with another prisoner in the United States is on the table. According to the Russian press published in May, citing judicial sources, the return to the Slavic country of Víktor But, a major arms dealer who was sentenced in 2012 to 25 years in prison for supplying weapons to the Colombian FARC guerrilla, has been considered.
The Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Sergei Riabkov, was expressly asked this Thursday about the possible exchange, and left the door open to address it once the trial is over. “It is clear that the necessary judicial procedures have not yet been completed,” the senior official told the Tass news agency. The politician also took the opportunity to defend Russian justice, even more in the spotlight in recent years due to the imprisonment of opposition politicians and protesters against the Ukrainian offensive.
“They try to present this issue in such a way that the legal system only works in the United States and maybe in a group of satellite countries. In the others, what is a normal judicial process is deliberately delegitimized. In this context it is quite difficult to engage in a well-founded conversation about various types of exchanges,” Ryabkov added. The Foreign Ministry has indicated that Griner can appeal the sentence or ask for clemency once there is a judicial resolution.
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