The champion saw her appeal rejected, after a sentence to nine years in prison for possession of a vapoteuse and liquid based on cannabis oil.
Le Monde
The American basketball champion Brittney Griner was transferred to a penitentiary colony in the center of Russia to serve a heavy prison sentence pronounced for drug trafficking, her lawyers announced on Thursday, November 17. She “started to purge her sentence” in the penitentiary colony IK-2, in Mordovie, a region of the center of Russia renowned for its prisons and its rigorous climate, announced Maria Blagovolina and Alexandre Biokov in a statement, adding that They had been able to visit their client earlier this week. 2>
“Very difficult period”
The 32 -year -old sportsman “is as well as possible and tries to stay strong and adapt to her new environment,” added the lawyers, stressing that their client was going through a “very difficult period”. His transfer comes after rejection of his request for appeal following his heavy conviction to nine years in prison in August for drug trafficking. She had been arrested in February at an airport in Moscow in possession of a vapoteuse and liquid based on cannabis oil, a substance consumed by certain high -level athletes to relieve chronic pain.
The White House estimated last week that “every minute that Brittney Griner must undergo unjustified detention in Russia is a minute too much”. His supporters denounce an excessive and political condemnation, with a view to a possible exchange of prisoners between Moscow and Washington, whose relations were strongly set out within the framework of the conflict in Ukraine. According to Russian diplomatic sources, such an exchange could affect Brittney Griner and a Russian arms dealer detained in the United States, Viktor Bout, who is serving a sentence of twenty-five years in prison.
The IK-2 penitentiary colony, located in the city of Iavas, has more than 800 prisoners. The Russian penitentiary colonies are renowned for the ill -treatment inflicted on their detainees, which are piled up in unhealthy barracks and often without access to adequate care. Human rights NGOs regularly denounce the abuses and acts of torture committed in Russian prisons, often by prisoners with good relations with the guards in exchange for privileges.
It is also in Mordovia, in the penitentiary colony IK-17, that an ex-American military, Paul Whelan, is detained for “espionage”. His family regularly denounces his conditions of detention, claiming that he is deliberately deprived of sleep and cannot receive the medical care he needs.