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WNBA basketball star Brittney Griner’s Russian lawyers filed an appeal Monday asking that her nine-year prison sentence on drug charges be shortened or thrown out.
Griner, a center for the Phoenix Mercury and a two-time Olympic gold medalist, was arrested in February at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport after vape canisters containing cannabis oil were found in her luggage. She said she packed it by accident, pleaded guilty and was formally convicted Aug. 4.
Griner played for a women’s basketball team in Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth-largest city, during the WNBA offseason.
The appeal comes one day after Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the Kremlin is ready for « a professional conversation and concrete steps » toward freeing Griner and American Paul Whelan in exchange for Russian national Viktor Bout. Bout is serving a 25-year sentence on charges of conspiring to kill U.S. citizens, delivery of anti-aircraft missiles and providing aid to a terrorist organization.
►More than 30,000 people have applied for Russian citizenship in the Zaporozhye region, Yevgeny Balitsky, head of the region’s military civilian administration, said Monday.
