For Brittany Griner’s family, friends, teammates and coaches, her situation is simple:
The Mercury Center was detained to Moscow airport in February with President Biden and the US government asking to release them. Has the power to cut a deal. now.
“I think that POTUS and the White House still need to step up and do something, because 130 days is too long for someone who has been wrongfully imprisoned,” Latter said. of Monday’s game
“When he (Biden) decides he’s going to come home, he’ll come home,” said Mercury coach Vanessa Nygaard, ahead”So, we want to urge her to play her part and bring Brittany home.”
simple But few things in life are so. There is certainly no possible exchange of prisoners by two countries with a broken relationship.
No matter what your opinion may be about Biden, it’s hard to imagine that he wouldn’t want Griner to come home. It’s been more than four months and now, on Friday, his trial is about to begin. Not that it would be too much testing. It is reported that less than one percent of defendants in Russian criminal cases are acquitted. If found guilty, Griner could face 10 years in prison.
But the White House and State Department wouldn’t be doing their job if they weren’t trying to strike a hard bargain with the Russians.
MORE:Brittany Griner appears in Russian court; Criminal trial date set
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Freising Griner may need America to free Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, named “The Merchant of Death”, according to speculation raised in Russian news media Is.
He was arrested in 2008 after undercover agents told Bout to sell missiles capable of shooting down American planes and other weapons that could kill American soldiers.
“When he was arrested, he was arguably the biggest and most sophisticated arms smuggler in the told Yahoo Sports in Mayworld,” hecould have given.”
The prospect of releasing Bout, who is serving a 25-year sentence, should give pause to the president. Maybe the White House is just asking Griner for more in return. There has been speculation of a two-for-one swap: Griner and former Marine Paul Whelan, imprisoned in Russia on espionage charges for the bout.
The US may be thinking that if anything less, other foreign countries will arrest Americans in hopes of a similar prisoner swap.
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This is not meant to ease the trauma Griner had endured. or his wife, other family members, teammates and friends. The basketball star and US Olympian would have been well established when he was arrested, a week before the Russians invaded Ukraine. Experts have said this is not unheard of in Russia.
Griner’s critics who say he should have respected the laws of another country ignore him and assume he is guilty.
The all grinner could be guilty of making a bad decision to return to Russia to play basketball, when everyone knew an invasion of Ukraine was imminent and would result in further strained US-Russian relations.
For the first few months after Griner’s detention, supporters remained relatively calm, heeding the advice that the less said, the better their chances of returning home.
That changed in May when the State Department reclassified Griner as wrongfully detained. Since then, Mercury & Sonssupporters have advocated for America to bring him home as soon as possible.
But does his case take precedence over Whelan’s? He has been held since December 2018, and was sentenced in 2020 to 16 years on charges of espionage, which he denied.
When fellow American Trevor Reid was released in April at a prisoner swap, Whelan asked, well, why he was left behind. It’s a question that will be repeated if Griner comes home and Whelan remains behind bars.
As Cunningham said, 130 days is too long for someone to be wrongfully imprisoned. So in Whelan’s case is 1,200 or so.
Both have to come home as soon as possible. It’s easy to jump to that conclusion. Making it is far more complicated.
