US Basketball star Brittney Griner said she’s “grateful” to be back in the United States and plans on playing basketball again a week after being freed from Russian prison in a high-profile prisoner exchange.
“It feels so good to be home!” Griner posted to Instagram on Friday in her first public statement since her release.
“The last 10 months have been a battle at every turn. I dug deep to keep my faith and it was the love from so many of you that helped keep me going. From the bottom of my heart, thank you to everyone for your help.”
Griner was arrested in February in Russia for carrying cannabis oil at a Moscow airports and was later convicted and sentenced to nine years in a Russian jail.
After months of strained negotiations, and an extraordinarily rare public revelation by the Biden administration that it had made a “substantial proposal” to bring home Griner and another detained American, Paul Whelan, the case resolved last week with a prisoner swap in which the WNBA star was exchanged in the United Arab Emirates for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.
“President Biden, you brought me home and I know you are committed to bringing Paul Whelan and all Americans home too,” Griner said. “I will use my platform to do whatever I can to help you. I also encourage everyone that played a part in bringing me home to continue their efforts to bring all Americans home. Every family deserves to be whole.”
The high-level prisoner swap, at a time of heightened tensions over Ukraine, was announced by US President Joe Biden.
“She’s safe, she’s on a plane, she’s on her way home,” he said.
The deal, the second such exchange in eight months with Russia, has procured the release of the most prominent American detained abroad.
Griner is a two-time Olympic gold medalist whose months-long imprisonment on drug charges brought unprecedented attention to the population of wrongful detainees.
WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said she was going to give Griner all the time she needed to decide whether she wanted to play basketball again, Griner made it clear that: “I intend to play basketball for the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury this season, and in doing so, I look forward to being able to say ‘thank you’ to those of you who advocated, wrote, and posted for me in person soon.”
