The Russian Court Rejects Appeal Of Britney Griner, WNBA Basketballist Permanently Sentenced To 9 Years In Prison

Britney Yevette Griner (Instagram @brittneyyevettegriner)

JAKARTA - The Russian court rejected Britney Griner's appeal on Tuesday. The basketball player from the United States was still sentenced to nine years in prison for drug possession.

Griner, eight-time all-star center with Phoenix Mercury and two Olympic gold medalists, was convicted on August 4 after police found vape tubes filled with cannabis oil in his suitcase at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport.

Moscow's regional court ruled on Tuesday to enforce the sentence. In court rulings, Griner's sentence will be recalculated with time in pre-trial detention.

One day in pre-trial detention will be counted as 1.5 days in prison, so the basketball star must serve about eight years in prison.

Griner took part in a Moscow Regional Court hearing via video call from a prison colony outside Moscow where he was jailed.

Griner's arrest in February came at a time when tensions between Moscow and Washington escalated, just days before Russia sent troops to Ukraine. At that time, Griner returned to Russia, where he played during the US league's offseason.

Griner admitted he had the tubes in his trunk, but testified that he accidentally packed them in a hurry and had no criminal intentions. His defense team presented a written statement saying he had been given a marijuana prescription for treating pain.

The nine-year sentence is close to a maximum of 10 years, and Griner's lawyers argued after the belief that the sentence was excessive. They said, in a similar case, the defendants received only an average sentence of about five years, with about a third of them being given parole.

Prior to his sentence, the US State Department declared Griner "falsely detained" - a charge Russia denies.

Reflecting the increasing pressure on Joe Biden's administration to do more to bring Griner home, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken took an unusual step by publicly revealing in July that Washington had made a "substantial proposal" to take Griner home, alongside Paul Whelan, an American national who served a 16-year sentence in Russia for espionage.

Blinken did not go into details, but The Associated Press and other news organizations reported Washington had offered to swap Griner and Whelan with Viktor Bout, a Russian arms trader who served 25 years in the US and was once nicknamed the "death trader."