The liberation of Brittney Griner was announced on Thursday by the American president, Joe Biden. This one exchanged it against the Russian Viktor Bout.
by Piotr Smolar (Washington, correspondent)
A presidential tweet announced the news, Thursday, December 8, shortly after 8 am. “A few moments ago, I spoke to Brittney Griner. She is safe. She is on the plane. She returns home.” By this message, Joe Biden formalized a exchange of prisoners between the United States And Russia, discussed for months, allowing the star player of basketball, aged 32, to go out of prison and return to her country. Brittney Griner, who was playing winter for the Russian club Iekaterinburg, was arrested in February during a security check at Moscow airport when cannabis oil had been found in his luggage. From then on, the sportswoman had become a pawn, even a hostage, in the hands of the Russian authorities.
The Kremlin finally obtained in return the liberation, long -hoped for a personality of a completely different profile, but also famous: the arms dealer Viktor Bout, who has long prospered thanks to the civil wars in Africa, Afghanistan and South America. It was at Abu Dhabi Airport (United Arab Emirates) that the two parties proceeded to exchange. The President’s special envoy for hostage affairs, Roger Carstens, welcomed the Tarmac Brittney Griner, who had previously been brought back to Moscow from the colony of Iavas, in the Mordovie region, where she was detained Since mid-November.
Joe Biden made a declaration to the White House, shortly after the dissemination of his message on social networks. Speaking in the Roosevelt Room alongside Chellelle, the wife of Brittney Griner, the vice-president, Kamala Harris, and the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, the president welcomed this liberation, obtained in the term of “intense negotiations”. Joe Biden spoke without dwelling the “intolerable circumstances” of his detention and his conviction, in August, at nine years in prison. He also called to respect the time and intimacy necessary for the sportswoman to recover from this experience.
“We have not forgotten Paul Whelan”
The liberation of Brittney Griner inspires a relief tinged with bitterness to the American administration, who hoped that negotiations with Russia would also obtain the return of another prisoner, Paul Whelan. “We have not forgotten Paul Whelan, who has been unjustly detained in Russia for years,” said Joe Biden.
Former navy, this American was the director of security in a group in Michigan manufacturing spare parts in the automotive sector. Also holder of Canadian, Irish and British passports, he was arrested in a Moscow hotel in December 2018, in possession of a USB key containing classified documents. Denouncing a conspiracy, he had been sentenced to 16 years in prison for espionage in June 2020.
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