A Russian court set WNBA player Brittney Griner’s appeal date for later this month.
The basketball superstar, who was convicted on Aug. 4 after pleading guilty to drug charges for bringing vape cartridges in her luggage through a Moscow airport, will be back in court on Oct. 25. During her trial, she admitted to bringing the cartridges, which she noted were prescribed, though she said it was an accident.
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She was sentenced to nine years in prison, close to the maximum she faced of a 10-year sentence. Ahead of her trial, the State Department declared Griner was being “wrongfully detained” by the Russian government.
Facing growing public pressure to get Griner back, the department said in July that Washington had made a “substantial proposal” to get her and Paul Whelan, another American the government considers wrongfully detained, home.
While the administration has declined to provide specifics of the offer, it’s been widely reported that it included the release of convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout, who has been dubbed the “Merchant of Death” because he has been accused of selling arms to sanctioned human rights abusers in various African nations. Russia has also sought the return of Vadim Krasikov, a former colonel from the country’s domestic spy agency who was convicted of murdering a former Chechen fighter in Germany in 2019 and sentenced to life in prison, according to CNN.
National Security Council coordinator John Kirby told reporters in mid-September that Russia has “not responded to our offer,” which he described as a “serious” one, adding, “The discussions are ongoing.”
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President Joe Biden met with Griner’s wife, Cherelle, and Whelan’s sister, Elizabeth, in mid-September to reassure them that the president’s team is doing everything possible to get them home, though the meeting was not to tell them that their loved ones would be returning imminently.
The State Department has had a string of successes in recent months in negotiating the release of hostages held by Venezuela, Russia, and the Taliban. It secured the release of the seven American hostages held in Venezuela this weekend, negotiated the return of Mark Frerichs, who had been held by the Taliban for nearly two years, last month, and got Trevor Reed home from Russia in the spring.
