Fri 09 December 2022:
Brittney Griner, a famous basketball player for the United States, was freed by Russia in a prisoner swap, according to authorities, spurring messages of relief from US officials, fans, and Griner’s loved ones who had lobbied for her return to the US for months.
According to the Russian foreign ministry, she was exchanged for Viktor Bout, a former Russian arms trader who is currently imprisoned in the United States. According to Russian news outlets, the exchange took place on Thursday at the airport in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
US President Joe Biden said Griner, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, was “on her way home”.
“She is safe. She is on a plane. She is on her way home,” Biden wrote in a Tweet that featured a picture of him and Griner’s wife, Cherelle Griner.
Griner, 32, a WNBA player for the Phoenix Mercury, was arrested on February 17 at a Moscow airport after cartridges containing cannabis oil, which is illegal in Russia, were discovered in her luggage.
Her detention came just days before Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, putting further strain on relations between Washington and Moscow. Early on, the Biden administration called her detention “wrongful.”
Paul Whelan, a former US Marine who was sentenced to 16 years in jail in 2020 on espionage accusations that Washington claims are baseless, was not included in the prisoner swap.
On Thursday, Biden vowed to continue to push for Whelan’s release. “While we have not yet succeeded in securing Paul’s release, we are not giving up. We will never give up,” Biden said. “We remain in close touch with Paul’s family – the Whelan family – and my thoughts and prayers are with them today.”
One-for-one
“It is worth noting that the US side initially wanted to pull off the exchange of its two citizens for one Russian citizen, ViKtor Bout for both Griner and Whelan. In the end, as we see, there was a one-for-one swap. The exchange should indeed be equal,” Tarasov told the Rossiya 24 broadcaster.
The lawyer added that the swap was expected, but its exact date was hard to predict.
In late July, Western media reported that the US had proposed to Russia that Moscow and Washington exchange Bout, sentenced in 2012 to 25 years in a US prison on charges of conspiring to murder American citizens, export anti-aircraft missiles and financially support terrorism, for US Marine Paul Whelan, sentenced in 2020 to 16 years in a Russian prison for spying, and Griner, sentenced in 2022 to nine years for illegally bringing cannabis oil to Russia.
In November, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said that Bout was one of the persons being discussed as part of the prisoner exchange with Washington and that Moscow was expecting a positive result in this matter.
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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