US basketball player Brittney Griner has been released from her detention center in Russia in a prisoner swap with Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who had been held in the US for 10 years. US President Joe Biden announced Griner’s release in a brief press conference.
Biden: “After months of being unjustly detained in Russia… Brittney [Griner] will soon be back in the arms of her loved ones, and she should’ve been there all along” https://t.co/5CktZhz92s pic.twitter.com/Ten1564oJU
— Bloomberg (@business) December 8, 2022
Griner is 32 years old and one of the best-known basketball players in the world, who has won the gold medal twice at the Olympics. She was arrested in Russia last February at the Moscow airport on drug smuggling charges, because she was carrying some cartridges for a vaporizer with hashish oil (a derivative of cannabis), which is prohibited in Russia. Since last month she had been held in a penal colony, a particularly harsh Russian detention center where inmates are forced to work for the state.
Updating.
