WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden says he hopes Russian President Vladimir Putin might be extra prepared to barter the discharge of WNBA star Brittney Griner now that the U.S. midterm elections are over. Biden mentioned in a information convention Wednesday that he’s “determined to get her home” in addition to others. He says, “My hope is that now that the election is over, that Mr. Putin will be able to discuss with us and be willing to talk more seriously about a prisoner exchange.”
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows under.
MOSCOW (AP) — American basketball star Brittney Griner has been despatched to a penal colony in Russia to serve her sentence for drug possession, her authorized crew mentioned Wednesday.
A Russian court docket rejected an attraction of her nine-year sentence final month. The eight-time all-star heart with the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury and a two-time Olympic gold medalist was convicted Aug. 4 after police mentioned they discovered vape canisters containing hashish oil in her baggage at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport.
Her arrest got here at a time of heightened tensions between Moscow and Washington, simply days earlier than Russia despatched troops into Ukraine, and the politically charged case may result in a high-stakes prisoner alternate between Washington and Moscow.
“Every minute that Brittney Griner must endure wrongful detention in Russia is a minute too long,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre mentioned. “As we have said before, the U.S. Government made a significant offer to the Russians to resolve the current unacceptable and wrongful detentions of American citizens.”
Griner’s authorized crew mentioned she left a detention heart exterior Moscow on Nov. 4 for a penal colony — as prisons in Russia are generally recognized. The transfer was anticipated since she misplaced her attraction.
Such transfers can take days and even weeks, throughout which period legal professionals and family members often don’t have contact with the prisoner. Even after she arrives, entry to Griner could also be tough since many penal colonies are in distant components of Russia.
Her legal professionals mentioned Wednesday that they didn’t know precisely the place she was or the place she would find yourself — however that they anticipated to be notified when she reached her closing vacation spot.
In a press release stressing the work being carried out to safe Griner’s launch, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken insisted that Russian authorities give the embassy common entry to Griner, as they’re required to do. Officials on the U.S. Embassy in Moscow visited Griner final week.
A senior State Department official, who spoke to reporters on situation of anonymity as a result of sensitivity of the case, mentioned the Russians had not notified American diplomats of Griner’s switch forward of time and had not but responded to queries from the American embassy about both her present whereabouts or final vacation spot.
In many penal colonies, prisoners work for minimal pay, and dissidents and different international locations have denounced the circumstances of these held. Imprisoned Russian opposition chief Alexei Navalny went on a starvation strike to protest his therapy, together with officers’ refusal to offer him the best medicines and to permit his physician to go to him behind bars.
He additionally protested the hourly checks a guard makes on him at evening, saying they quantity to sleep deprivation torture.
Griner, 32, who was detained whereas returning to play for a Russian crew in the course of the WNBA’s offseason, has admitted that she had the canisters in her baggage. But she testified that she had inadvertently packed them in haste and that she had no prison intent. Her protection crew offered written statements that she had been prescribed hashish to deal with ache.
The Associated Press and different information organizations have reported that Washington has supplied to alternate Griner and Paul Whelan — an American serving a 16-year sentence in Russia for espionage — for Viktor Bout. Bout is a Russian arms vendor who’s serving a 25-year sentence within the U.S. and as soon as earned the nickname the “merchant of death.”
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Associated Press author Matthew Lee contributed to this report from Washington.
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Follow AP’s protection of Brittney Griner at: https://apnews.com/hub/brittney-griner
Source: www.bostonherald.com”