MOSCOW (AP) — Legal professionals for American basketball star Brittney Griner on Monday filed an attraction towards her nine-year Russian jail sentence for drug possession, Russian information businesses reported Monday.
Griner, a middle for the Phoenix Mercury and a two-time Olympic gold medalist, was convicted on Aug. 4. She was arrested in February at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport after vape canisters containing hashish oil have been present in her baggage.
Griner performed for a ladies’s basketball crew in Yekaterinburg throughout the WNBA offseason.
Lawyer Maria Blagovolina was quoted by Russian information businesses on Monday as saying the attraction was filed, however the grounds of the attraction weren’t instantly clear.
Blagovolina and co-counsel Alexander Boykov stated after the conviction that the sentence was extreme and that in comparable circumstances defendants have obtained a mean sentence of about 5 years, with a few third of them granted parole.
Griner admitted that she had the canisters in her baggage, however stated she had inadvertently packed them in haste and that she had no legal intent. Her protection crew introduced written statements that she had been prescribed hashish to deal with ache.
Earlier than her conviction, the U.S. State Division declared Griner to be “wrongfully detained.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken took the bizarre step of showing publicly in July that the U.S. had made a “substantial proposal” to get Griner residence residence, together with Paul Whelan, an American serving a 16-year sentence in Russia for espionage.
Blinken didn’t elaborate, however The Related Press and different information organizations have reported that Washington has provided to free Viktor Bout, a Russian arms vendor who's serving a 25-year sentence within the U.S. and as soon as earned the nickname the “Service provider of Dying.”
On Sunday, a senior Russian diplomat stated change talks have been performed.
“This fairly delicate problem of the swap of convicted Russian and U.S. residents is being mentioned by way of the channels outlined by our presidents,” Alexander Darchiev, head of the International Ministry’s North America division, advised state information company Tass. “These people are, certainly, being mentioned. The Russian aspect has lengthy been looking for the discharge of Viktor Bout. The small print ought to be left to professionals, continuing from the ‘don't hurt’ precept.’”
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