Tamara Rapajic

Brittney Griner has been released from a Russian prison, in exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, after being detained in February 2022 for possessing cannabis oil. She landed in Texas on the 10th of December.

Brittney Griner travelled to the US at the beginning of the year to play basketball. However, she was detained at an airport in Moscow for carrying cannabis oil. In court, she admitted that she possessed canisters with cannabis oil but emphasised that she packed them accidentally and had no criminal intent.

Griner plead guilty in a Russian court in July, but a guilty plea does not automatically end a trial in Russia. She was convicted of drug possession and smuggling in August. She was sentenced to nine years in prison and fined one million rubles. In total, Griner spent 1o months in the Russian prison system.

The Biden administration has been working on her release for a long time, first proposing a prisoner exchange in July 2022. The swap took months to negotiate and has drawn criticism from US citizens for not including Paul Whelan. However, President Biden insists that the US has not forgotten about him.

Griner’s family released a statement in which they thanked President Biden and his administration for their assistance in Griner’s release. Griner is currently under observation at Brooke Army Medical Centre.

Griner was released on the 8th of December in a prison swap between the US and Russia for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. Bout is one of the most infamous arms dealers, with the nickname ‘Merchant of Death’. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison after a sting operation by the US Drug Enforcement Agency where they posed as potential buyers from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as Farc. He was 12 years into his 25-year sentence upon his release.

Featured image courtesy of Emiliano Bar on Unsplash. No changes were made to this image. Image license can be found here. 

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