The WNBA superstar has been locked up in a Moscow jail for nearly 6 months after being stopped at the airport with cannabis oil. Possible exchange of US-Russian prisoners still on the table
Nine and a half years in prison. This is the request of the Russian prosecutors for Brittney Griner, WNBA superstar arrested just under six months ago at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport for possessing some vials of cannabis oil. Today the final pleadings were held at the court of Khimki, a suburb of the Russian capital. Griner has always appealed to the medical use of cannabis. The maximum penalty for this offense is 10 years. In the evening the judge should impose the final sentence.
hostage exchange
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Barring an unlikely reduction in allowing her to return to freedom, Brittney will then have to hope for a prisoner swap to leave Russian prisons. US Secretary of State Blinken had contacted the equal role Lavrov in recent days (first meeting at this level since the Russian invasion of Ukraine) proposing to repatriate the arms dealer Viktor Bout, detained in the United States, in exchange for Griner and by Paul Whelan, an American imprisoned in Russia on charges of espionage. He is a move that goes against the Biden government’s declared intentions to isolate the Kremlin and that underlines the media and public opinion pressure for the release of the Wnba star. Officially, the Russian response was heavy, with accusations that the US did not show the slightest respect for local law. But in these cases bluffs are more frequent than at a poker table in Las Vegas …
August 4th – 3:18 pm
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