U.S. basketball player Brittney Griner appeared at a Russian court on Tuesday for the fifth hearing of her trial on drug charges that could carry a jail sentence of up to 10 years.
Griner, a Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) star who has played in Russia during the league’s offseason, was escorted into the defendant’s cage in a courtroom at the Khimki District Court outside Moscow, bending down to avoid banging her head against the door frame. Wearing round-rimmed glasses and a black and grey sweatshirt with Black Lives For Peace on the back, Griner shook hands with her lawyers through the bars of the defendant’s cage.
Before taking a seat, Griner held up a lined sheet of paper with personal pictures, including that of her wife Cherelle in her #42 Phoenix Mercury jersey, her WNBA team. The two-time Olympic champion was arrested at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on Feb. 17 after vape cartridges containing hashish oil were found in her baggage.
Griner, who has appealed to U.S. President Joe Biden to secure her release, has pled guilty but denied she intended to break Russian law. Her case comes at a time when ties between Washington and Moscow are at their worst in decades over Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine.
U.S. officials and prominent athletes argue the 31-year-old has been wrongly detained and have called for her to be released immediately. The Russian authorities dismiss the U.S. criticism and say the case against her is not political.
