U.S basketball star Brittney Griner, a Houston native, has been released from Russian custody in a prisoner exchange swap, President Joe Biden said Thursday morning.
"Moments ago I spoke to Brittney Griner. She is safe. She is on a plane. She is on her way home," Biden said in a tweet announcing the release.
In a Thursday morning press conference, Biden said he had spoken with Griner on the phone and that she is "in good spirits."
"She's relieved to finally be heading home, and the fact remains that she's lost months of her life, experienced needless trauma," he said. "She endured mistreatment and a show trial in Russia with characteristic grit and incredible dignity."
Griner was arrested in a Moscow airport in February after airport officials discovered vape canisters and cannabis oil in her luggage. She was sentenced to nine years in Russian prison for smuggling illegal drugs into that country. The White House called the legal proceedings a "sham." Griner pleaded guilty to the charges in September and apologized for the incident, calling it an "honest mistake."
Griner was a star on the Baylor University Lady Bears basketball team from 2009-13. She has played for the Phoenix Mercury since the 2013 draft, but also played basketball in China and Russia during the off-seasons.
Her release was negotiated in exchange for the release of Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, nicknamed "the Merchant of Death," CBS News first reported Thursday morning.
Griner's wife Cherelle appeared at the press conference alongside Biden to announce the release.
"Over the last nine months, y'all have been so privy to one of the darkest moments of my life," she said. "Today I'm just standing here, overwhelmed with emotions. But the most important emotion that I have right now is just sincere gratitude for President Biden and his entire administration."
Biden said he'd been engaged in "painstaking and intense negotiations" to release Griner from the beginning of her detainment.
Notably, the prisoner swap did not include retired U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who has been in Russian custody for nearly four years on espionage charges that U.S. officials also claim are false.
Biden said Thursday his administration has not "forgotten about Paul Whelan, who has been unjustly detained in Russia for years."
"This was not a choice of which American to bring home," he said "Sadly, for totally illegitimate reasons, Russia is treating Paul's case differently than Brittney's. And while we have not yet succeeded in securing Paul's release, we are not giving up."
In April, Biden negotiated for the release of another Texan — Trevor Reed, a former Marine who had been detained in Russia for more than two years. Reed traveled to Russia in the summer of 2019 with his Russian girlfriend to learn the language. That August, after a party, Russian police took him to a police station to sober up, but he was later accused of assaulting an officer, ABC News reported.
In exchange for Reed's freedom, Americans released Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who was serving a lengthy sentence in the United States on cocaine-trafficking charges.
For decades, the U.S. government has periodically engaged in the diplomatic dance of prisoner exchanges with Russia and the former Soviet Union. But with Russia's continued invasion of Ukraine, the swap comes at the most fraught moment between the two countries since the Cold War.
Bobby Blanchard contributed to this story.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/12/08/brittney-griner-wnba-russia/.
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