(MOSCOW) — More than four months after she became arrested at a Moscow airport for hashish possession, American basketball famous person Brittney Griner is to appear in court Monday for a preliminary listening to earlier than her trial.
The Phoenix Mercury famous person, conception to be in some polls to be the US’ most talented feminine athlete, would possibly presumably moreover face 10 years in penal advanced if convicted on prices of tall-scale transportation of equipment. Fewer than 1% of defendants in Russian criminal instances are acquitted, and never like within the U.S., acquittals would possibly presumably moreover merely moreover be overturned.
The trial date has no longer been presented, nonetheless is anticipated soon; Griner became no longer too lengthy ago ordered to remain in pretrial detention till July 2. The listening to within the court of the Moscow suburb of Khimki is to handle procedural factors.
Griner’s detention and trial come at an awfully low level in Moscow-Washington family members. She became arrested at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport no longer as much as per week sooner than Russia despatched troops into Ukraine, which aggravated already-high tensions with sweeping sanctions by the US and Russia’s denunciation of U.S. weapon offers to Ukraine.
Amid the tensions, Griner’s supporters had taken a low profile in hopes of a clean resolution, till Can also, when the State Division reclassified her as wrongfully detained and shifted oversight of her case to its particular presidential envoy for hostage affairs — successfully the U.S. authorities’s chief negotiator.
That transfer has drawn extra attention to Griner’s case, with supporters encouraging a prisoner swap esteem the one in April that introduced home Marine used Trevor Reed in alternate for a Russian pilot convicted of drug trafficking conspiracy.
Russian files media possess typically raised speculation that she would be swapped for Russian palms seller Viktor Bout, nicknamed “The Carrier provider of Loss of life,” who’s serving a 25-year sentence on conviction of conspiracy to assassinate U.S. residents and providing lend a hand to a terrorist group.
Russia has agitated for Bout’s start for years. But the discrepancy between Griner’s case — she allegedly became demonstrate in possession of vape cartridges containing hashish oil — and Bout’s world dealings in lethal weapons would possibly presumably moreover construct such a swap unpalatable to the U.S.
Others possess urged that she would be traded in tandem with Paul Whelan, a used Marine and security director serving a 16-year sentence on an espionage conviction that the US has typically described as a blueprint-up.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, asked Sunday on CNN whether or no longer a joint swap of Griner and Whelan for Bout became being conception to be, sidestepped the interrogate.
“As a total proposition … I possess obtained no better priority than making clear that American citizens who’re being illegally detained in a single methodology or one other all around the field come home,” he talked about. But “I will’t observation in any detail on what we’re doing, rather then to advise here’s an absolute priority.”
Any swap would curiously require Griner to first be convicted and sentenced, then note for a presidential pardon, Maria Yarmush, a lawyer that focus on global civil affairs, told Kremlin-funded TV channel RT.
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