Brittney Griner has been freed from a Russian penal colony in a one-for-one swap for an international arms dealer, ending a 10-month ordeal for the WNBA star.
“She’s safe. She’s on a plane. She’s on her way home,” President Biden said Thursday morning, with Griner’s wife, Cherelle Griner, at his side. “After months of being unjustly detained in Russia, held under intolerable circumstances, Brittney will soon be back in the arms of her loved ones. And she should have been there all along.”
Griner, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, had been arrested at a Russian airport in February on charges stemming from the discovery of vape cartridges containing less than a gram of cannabis oil in her luggage.
She later pleaded guilty to the charges in a Russian court at the advice of lawyers to allow for negotiations for her release to begin.
In the aftermath of her guilty plea, she was transferred to a penal colony to begin serving out a nine-year sentence.
Behind the scenes, the Biden administration had been trying to negotiate the release of Griner and another American, Paul Whelan, a retired Marine who has been detained in Russia for four years on espionage charges that the U.S. has called false, for several months, proposing a two-for-two prisoner swap with the Kremlin, which pushed instead for a one-for-one swap involving Griner and the arms dealer, Viktor Bout.
President Biden signed a commutation order cutting short Bout’s 25-year sentence on his conviction on arms trafficking charges to facilitate that exchange, which had been developing quietly for the past several days.
Biden, speaking to the nation Thursday morning, said the efforts to try to win the freedom of Whelan are ongoing.
“We’ve not forgotten about Paul Whelan,” Biden said.
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Chris Graham
