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Escorted by a masked police officer with a canine, along with her wrists handcuffed, the American basketball star Brittney Griner appeared in a Russian court docket on Tuesday for one other listening to in a trial that’s more likely to finish along with her conviction in the center of this month, her legal professionals mentioned.
One of the most effective gamers of her technology, Ms. Griner has been caught in a high-stakes rivalry between Moscow and Washington that has changed into outright confrontation with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And as the case is heard in a courtroom, the wrangling over Ms. Griner’s destiny has shifted more and more to the diplomatic area, with Russia and the United States signaling her doable involvement in an alternate for high-profile Russians held in custody in the United States.
Last week, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken mentioned the American authorities had “put a substantial proposal on the table,” though he declined to debate the small print. On Thursday, he mentioned the matter together with his Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, in their first cellphone name because the conflict in Ukraine. But no breakthroughs had been reported, and no progress is anticipated earlier than a decide in the city of Khimki close to Moscow delivers a verdict in the case.
Mr. Griner, 31, was detained in a Moscow airport whereas touring to Yekaterinburg, Russia, to play for a neighborhood crew there about one week earlier than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Customs officers discovered two cartridges containing vape oil in her baggage.
News of her detention was made public solely after the conflict began, nonetheless. She was charged with making an attempt to smuggle a major quantity of unlawful narcotics into Russia, an offense that carries a sentence of as much as 10 years in jail.
Last month, Ms. Griner plead responsible to the costs, stressing that she had not supposed to interrupt Russian legislation and that the unlawful substance had been in her baggage as a results of oversight whereas packing in a rush. In Russia, a responsible plea doesn’t finish a trial, and the proceedings are anticipated to proceed till mid-August, in accordance with her authorized crew.
The case is scheduled to renew on Thursday.
Her legal professionals, Maria Blagovolina and Aleksandr Boikov, try to influence the decide to melt the eventual sentence. They had one in every of Mr. Griner’s Russian teammates, Yevgeniya Belyakova, testify, together with the crew’s director and physician. Her authorized crew has additionally argued that she was approved to make use of medicinal hashish in Arizona, the place she has performed for the Phoenix Mercury since 2013, to mitigate ache from accidents to her backbone, ankle and knees.
During her personal testimony in court docket final week, Ms. Griner described how upon detention she had confronted a complicated and typically bewildering Russian authorized system. Her rights weren’t defined to her and a lawyer was offered solely 16 hours after her detention started, she mentioned. Ms. Griner additionally mentioned that she had been instructed to signal papers with no clarification of what they implied and that an interpreter, offered by the legislation enforcement, had translated “almost nothing.”
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