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As US basketball player Brittney Griner stands trial in Russia accused of drug smuggling, a growing number of other foreign nationals are also imprisoned in harsh conditions. Is Russia building a store of international prisoners to use as political pawns?
Detained American basketball player Brittney Griner made a direct appeal for her freedom in a handwritten letter to US President Joe Biden, delivered to the White House on July 4.
Griner has been held in Russian prison since February 2022 when the Russian Federal Customs Service said it discovered vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage after she arrived on a flight from New York to Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow.
“I’m terrified I might be here forever,” Griner wrote, five months after she was first arrested. “Please don’t forget about me and the other American detainees. Please do all you can to bring us home.”
Griner, 31, is one of the most decorated female basketball players in the US. She now faces a prison sentence of up to 10 years if convicted of drug smuggling charges, even though US authorities maintain that she has been “wrongfully detained”.
Some US commentators have denounced her hearing, which began on July 1, as a “show trial” and said that Russia is using Griner, who was arrested one week before Russia invaded Ukraine, as a political pawn.
“It’s a period of markedly heightened tension between Russia and the US,” says Ben Noble, associate professor of Russian politics at University College London. “The original detention of Brittney Griner may or may not have been politically motivated, but this certainly has become a politicised case.”
‘Humiliated as a human being’
Following the delivery of Griner’s letter, her wife, Cherelle Griner, told CBS Mornings on Tuesday that the basketball player was “probably the strongest person I know. That means…
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Source : france24
