Brittney Griner moved to Russian penal colony, lawyer says

By Phil Helsel and Andrea Mitchell, NBC News

American basketball player Brittney Griner, jailed in Russia in what the U.S. calls a wrongful detention, is being moved to a penal colony, her attorneys said Wednesday.

“We do not have any information on her exact current location or her final destination,” her attorneys, Maria Blagovolina and Alexander Boykov, said in a statement.

Griner, a center for the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury, was detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport in February, after Russian authorities said they found vape canisters with cannabis oil in her luggage.

Griner, 32, was sentenced to nine years in prison in August; a Russian court upheld the sentence last month after her lawyers appealed.

U.S. officials consider Griner to be unlawfully detained. National security adviser Jake Sullivan has characterized the court proceedings as a sham.

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Many feel Griner’s punishment is unjust because she only had a small amount of cannabis for personal use. Similar cases in the U.S. led some to question whether the war on drugs is really a war on Blacks.

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