Griner, the appeal against the conviction in Russia for drugs and the attack by Moscow on US diplomacy

Lawyers defending Brittney Griner, the US basketball star jailed and sentenced to nine years in Russia on charges of drug possession and drug dealing, have filed an appeal. The US athlete was sentenced on August 4 with a verdict that US President Joe Biden called “unacceptable”. Washington says, in fact, that she was unjustly detained and in recent days had offered the Kremlin an exchange of prisoners, agreeing, in exchange for Griner, to free Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer who is serving a prison sentence of 25 years. in the United States.
Today is the last day for Griner’s defense attorneys to challenge the verdict. Maria Blagovolina, partner of the law firm Rybalkin Gortsunyan Dyakin and Partners, told Reuters the appeal had been filed, but she did not make any other comments.
Griner, a two-time Olympic gold medalist and athlete who had played for a Russian club, was arrested at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on February 17 after cannabis vaporizer cartridges were found in her luggage. She pleaded guilty to the charges, but she said she had no intention of breaking the law. “I made a mistake in good faith,” Griner pointed out to the court in Khimki, near Moscow, before the sentence was pronounced. The defense, in filing an appeal, underlined that “we ask to overturn the verdict issued by the Khimki court and to impose a new sentence”. Speaking to Reuters was Alexander Boikov, a lawyer from the Moscow Legal Center who represented Griner in court. He said the appeal would mainly be based on alleged violations in the course of the investigation. Griner’s defense team argued in court that some of her files had been processed without being translated into English for her.
The misfortune, for the American athlete, was then to end up at the center of a real geopolitical case, also following the outbreak, a week after his arrest, of the Russia – Ukraine war, following the invasion of Putin’s troops. Russia now continues to deny that the Griner case may have any political motivation. He warned the United States, warning them to stand out what the Kremlin called “megaphone diplomacy” and warned that any prisoner swap should be negotiated in private. In a Telegram post, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova challenged the White House’s public criticism of the Russian court verdict. A “megaphone diplomacy” which, according to Moscow, clashes with the silence that has fallen after the FBI raid last week on the property of former President Donald Trump, of which a White House spokesperson said that Biden was not in knowledge. “Do we have to remember that? Griner smuggled cartridges of smoking liquid, which contained hashish oil. The basketball player herself admitted it, since she made no sense to deny it, ”said Zakharova. And she added: “At the same time, the White House refuses to comment on the Trump investigation and his seizure of some documents relating to the White House. Absolute silence, even if we are talking about American justice and law enforcement ».