American professional basketball player Brittney Griner has been transferred to a Russian penal colony, where she will finish the remaining nine years of a drug smuggling sentence that was upheld in late October.
Griner's legal counsel said she is "on her way to a penal colony" on Wednesday, as per a CNN report. Brittney Griner's lawyers Maria Blagovolina and Alexander Boykov say they have no information on her exact current location or "her final destination."
US Authorities Still Working on Brittney Griner's Release
According to customary Russian practice, the US Embassy and the attorneys should be contacted as soon as she arrives at her destination. The official mail delivery time for notification is up to two weeks.
Inmates in Russian penal colonies are generally forced to perform hard labor and suffer from poor sanitation and medical services. Griner's appeal of her sentence was rejected last month. In February, she was arrested and in August, she was found guilty of transporting drugs into Russia.
She played basketball there throughout the offseason and has since apologized profusely for bringing in a tiny bit of cannabis. Russian investigators discovered vape canisters with cannabis oil in Griner's luggage when she was stopped at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport in February. Griner plays center for the Phoenix Mercury in the WNBA.
Brittney Griner, now 32, was found guilty in August and given a sentence of nine years in prison, which was reaffirmed by a Russian court last month despite an appeal by her attorneys.
The US says the imprisonment of Brittney Griner is illegal. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, has called the trial a farce. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stated that the government is still attempting to secure her release, per NBC News.
In a statement on Wednesday, Jean-Pierre noted that each minute Brittney Griner suffers in her "wrongful detention in Russia" is "a minute too long." According to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Griner's transfer is "another injustice" placed on her prolonged unfair, and unlawful incarceration.
The Women's National Basketball Players Association described the decision as a "scary, seemingly never-ending nightmare" and expressed its "crushing" reaction to it in a statement, adding that "the lack of clarity" and openness in the system intensifies the agony.
A Complicated Situation
A senior State Department official spoke on the condition of anonymity to say that Russia did not inform the United States that Griner was being transported. Assembling and transporting huge groups of inmates across the world's largest country to send them to penal colonies can be a lengthy process.
US President Joe Biden has ordered his administration to intercede with her Russian captors to improve the condition that Brittney Griner must bear in a penal colony, according to Reuters.
Late in July, the Biden administration suggested a prisoner swap with Russia to secure Griner's release and that of former US Marine Paul Whelan. However, Moscow has not yet accepted the proposal.
Russia has remained silent on the status of negotiations, claiming that such diplomacy has no place in the open. The talks have been made more difficult by the deterioration of relations between Russia and the West due to the conflict in Ukraine.
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