Brittney Griner begins switch to Russian penal colony, attorneys say

Muricas News  — 

US girls’s basketball star Brittney Griner is within the strategy of being moved to a Russian penal colony the place she is because of serve the rest of a nine-year drug smuggling sentence that was upheld in late October.

Griner “is now on her technique to a penal colony,” her attorneys stated in a press release to Muricas News Wednesday.

“We shouldn't have any info on her actual present location or her ultimate vacation spot,” stated attorneys Maria Blagovolina and Alexander Boykov. “In accordance with the usual Russian process, the attorneys, in addition to the US Embassy, ought to be notified upon her arrival at her vacation spot. Notification is given through official mail and usually takes as much as two weeks to be acquired.”

Russian penal colonies are identified for his or her lack of hygiene and entry to medical care, with inmates usually subjected to handbook labor.

Final month, Griner misplaced her enchantment towards a nine-year drug sentence. She was detained in February and convicted in August of intentionally smuggling medicine into Russia.

She has repeatedly apologized for bringing a small quantity of hashish into the nation, the place she performed basketball within the low season.

In a press release, Griner’s representatives confirmed they have no idea her present location or situation.

“Our major concern continues to be BG’s well being and well-being,” her agent Lindsay Colas stated. “As we work by way of this very troublesome part of not understanding precisely the place BG is or how she is doing, we ask for the general public’s help in persevering with to write down letters and specific their love and take care of her.”

Griner’s detention has raised considerations that she is getting used as a political pawn in Russia’s conflict towards Ukraine.

The US authorities condemned the denial of her enchantment final week, with a State Division spokesperson calling it “one other repudiation of justice, which solely compounds the unique injustice of her detention.”