Lawyers for American star basketball player Brittney Griner have appealed her nine-year prison sentence in Russia for drug possession, Russian news agencies reported on Monday.
Griner, a Phoenix Mercury center and two-time Olympic gold medalist, was sentenced Aug. 4. She was arrested in February at Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow after vaping cartridges containing cannabis oil were found in her luggage.
Griner played for a women’s basketball team in Yekaterinburg during the WNBA offseason.
Lawyer Maria Blagovolina was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying the appeal had been filed, but the grounds for the appeal were not immediately clear.
Blagovolina and his colleague Alexander Boykov revealed after the conviction that the sentence was excessive and that in similar cases the defendants had been sentenced to an average term of about five years, of which about a third had been granted parole.
Griner admitted she had the cartridges in her luggage, but clarified that she inadvertently hastily packed them and had no criminal intent. His defense team presented written statements that he was prescribed cannabis to treat the pain.
Prior to her sentencing, the US State Department claimed that Griner was “wrongfully detained.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken took the unusual step of publicly revealing in July that the United States had made a “substantial offer” to bring Griner home, along with Paul Whelan, an American serving a 16-year sentence in Russia for spying.
Blinken did not give details, but The Associated Press and other news organizations reported that Washington had offered to release Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer who is serving a 25-year sentence in the United States and who once earned the nickname “Merchant of Death”.
On Sunday, a senior Russian diplomat said swap talks had been held.
“This rather sensitive issue of the exchange of convicted Russian and American citizens is being discussed through the channels set by our presidents,” Alexander Darchiev, head of the North America department at the Foreign Ministry, told the official Tass news agency. . These individuals are indeed the subject of discussion. The Russian side has long called for the release of Viktor Bout. The details should be left to the professionals, on a ‘do no harm’ basis.”