Russia’s Foreign Ministry stated on Wednesday that the basketball star Brittney Griner, at the moment on trial in Russia on drug smuggling fees, might enchantment her sentence or ask for clemency as soon as the court docket delivers its verdict.
“The court must first deliver its verdict, but no one is stopping Brittney Griner from making use of the appeal procedure and also from requesting clemency,” Aleksei Zaitsev, a ministry spokesman, informed reporters at a information briefing in Moscow.
Mr. Zaitsev stated that Ms. Griner’s “serious offense has been supported by indisputable evidence” and that “attempts to present her case as though the American woman was illegally detained do not stand up to criticism.”
Ms. Griner, 31, was detained on Feb. 17 after she was accused of getting cannabis oil in her baggage at an airport close to Moscow, the place she had traveled to play with UMMC Yekaterinburg, a Russian skilled ladies’s basketball staff.
The U.S. authorities has labeled Ms. Griner as “wrongfully detained,” which means that it believes the costs in opposition to her are falsified — maybe meant to stress Washington over the warfare in Ukraine.
If she is convicted, she faces as much as 10 years in a Russian penal colony. On Monday, she despatched a handwritten letter to President Biden asking him to not “forget about” her and different American detainees.