Griner Upset About Jail Conditions But Terrified of Where She's Headed Next, According to Lawyer
American basketball player Brittney Griner fears for her future.
Griner is “increasingly anxious” about her prospects of release from a sentence in a Russian prison, according to The New York Times.
Griner’s Russian lawyer indicated that the WNBA player who is behind bars on drug possession charges is struggling.
“She has not been in as good condition as I could sometimes find her in,” Alexandr D. Boykov said in an interview published Wednesday.
Griner was arrested at a Moscow airport in February after a small amount of hashish oil was found in her luggage. In August, she was sentenced to nine years in a Russian penal colony, according to the Times.
Boykov claims that Griner fears the United States government won’t make a deal for Russian authorities to secure her freedom.
“She is not yet absolutely convinced that America will be able to take her home,” Boykov claims.
“She is very worried about what the price of that [a prisoner exchange] will be, and she is afraid that she will have to serve the whole sentence here in Russia.”
Griner is currently in a penal colony outside Moscow, according to the Times. But that might not be where she serves her sentence. And it’s the prospect of where she might be going that’s terrifying.
“Mr. Boykov said that the uncertainty over which type of prison Ms. Griner would end up in is a particular concern, as she fears it will be one with miserable or inhumane conditions,” the Times reported.
President Joe Biden during an interview last week with CNN’s Jake Tapper indicated he’s willing to negotiate for Griner’s release, even in a direct meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin himself.
It’s more than legitimate to point out that Griner’s previous criticism of the American justice system is an acute irony, considering her circumstances. You’re unlikely to find inmates serving nine-year sentences in American prisons for bringing a personal quantity of marijuana through an airport.
Griner went beyond merely kneeling for “The Star-Spangled Banner” — the progressive athlete openly called for the WNBA to cease playing the national anthem in 2020, going so far as to announce that she would remain in her team’s locker room when the anthem was played, according to a July 2020 report in The Washington Post.
Now, the multimillionaire athlete would probably be more than relieved to hear “The Star Spangled Banner” instead of Russia’s national anthem, which is itself a crude replacement of the Soviet anthem.
Regardless of Griner’s leftist views, Russia’s sham of a justice system is exactly that — a sham. American basketball players aren’t the only people who end up wrongfully locked up in the dictatorship, or anywhere near its real victims.
Political figures who gain traction in challenging Vladimir Putin’s neo-Stalinist regime are regularly railroaded into Russian prisons. Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is facing a 15-year prison term on spurious charges after his suspected poisoning, according to the U.K. Guardian.
A dismal 0.25 percent of defendants in Russian criminal cases are acquitted, according to state data reviewed by the U.K. Independent.
One would almost think that Griner’s experience as a prisoner of a real authoritarian state would lead her to reconsider her anti-American views. And perhaps it will.
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