The Moscow Region Court is addressing today, Tuesday, the appeal filed by American basketball player Brittney Griner, sentenced in August to 9 years in prison for drug possession and smuggling.
The hearing, in which the justice of the sentence issued on August 4 by the urban court of Khimki (Moscow region) will be assessed, begins at 11:00 in the morning (08:00 GMT).
Then, the judge considered the athlete “guilty of committing the crime” stipulated by articles 228 and 229.1 of the Russian penal code (possession and trafficking of drugs).
The world and Olympic champion, who was arrested last February at a Moscow airport with cannabis oil in her suitcase, accepted the ruling, although during the trial she asked for mercy after admitting her mistake.
However, her lawyers, who questioned the cannabis samples taken by the Russian police after her arrest as evidence, appealed the ruling on August 15.
Russian legislation punishes the crime committed by the American, 2.06 meters tall and who plays for the Russian team UMMC in Yekaterinburg, with a maximum of ten years in prison.
The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, proposed to his Russian colleague, Sergei Lavrov, the exchange of Griner and fellow American Paul Whelan, sentenced to 16 years for espionage, for the “merchant of death”, the Russian Victor But , who is serving 25 years in prison in an American prison.
The White House rejected the “opponent” of Russia, who wanted to include a second Russian prisoner in the exchange, the Chechen Vadím Krásikov, according to CNN.
In mid-September, the president of the United States, Joe Biden, who has called for Griner’s immediate release, received the basketball player’s relatives in the Oval Office of the White House.
The US maintains that it has made a “serious proposal for Griner and Whelan to return home”, but argues that Moscow has not yet responded.
Shortly after, the Russian Foreign Ministry assured that it remains ready to negotiate at any time the exchange of Russian prisoners for Americans.