Brittney Griner, one of America’s most decorated women’s basketball players, has been detained by the Russian Federal Customs Service after it said it discovered vape cartridges that contained hashish oil in her luggage at an airport near Moscow.
The Customs Service confirmed in a statement issued on Saturday that the detainee in an incident last month at Sheremetyevo airport was a professional basketball player who played in the Women’s National Basketball Association and had also won two Olympic gold medals with the United States, but did not release the player’s name.
Russia’s state-run Tass news agency identified the player as Griner, a seven-time All-Star center with the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury who helped lead Team USA to gold at the Rio and Tokyo Olympic Games, citing a law enforcement source.
According to the Customs Service statement, drug-sniffing dogs in the airport’s customs area indicated the possible presence of narcotic drugs in the player’s carry-on baggage following her arrival on a flight from New York. A subsequent search of the luggage led to the discovery of the cartridges, a criminal violation under Russian law that carries a sentence of five to 10 years.
The Customs Service also released a video on Saturday in which the airport security services are seen going through the luggage of a passenger identified as Griner.
The Russian Federal Customs Service have released this video in which airport security are seen going through the luggage of a passenger identified as Brittney Griner. pic.twitter.com/gHJ8XoMYvF
— Bryan Armen Graham (@BryanAGraham) March 5, 2022
In a statement to the Guardian, Griner’s agent Lindsay Colas said: “We are aware of the situation with Brittney Griner in Russia and are in close contact with her, her legal representation in Russia, her family, her teams, and the WNBA and NBA.
“As this is an ongoing legal matter, we are not able to comment further on the specifics of her case but can confirm that as we work to get her home, her mental and physical health remain our primary concern.”
The WNBA said in a release that Griner has the league’s “full support” and “our main priority is her swift and safe return to the United States”.
The Mercury echoed those sentiments in a statement issued later Saturday, saying they were “in constant contact” with Griner’s family and their main concern was the player’s safe return.
The 31-year-old Griner, who led Phoenix to the franchise’s third ever title in 2014 and a surprise return to the WNBA finals in October, has also played for UMMC Ekaterinburg during the offseason since 2015, helping the Russian club to three domestic titles and EuroLeague Women championships in 2016, 2018, 2019 and 2021.
Nearly 90 of the WNBA’s 144 rostered players have spent time playing overseas during this offseason, where the earnings from their foreign clubs often dwarf what they make in the United States. Griner’s annual salary with UMMC of more than $1m per year is roughly quadruple the WNBA’s league maximum of about $228,000.
It is unclear how long Griner has been detained as Saturday’s statement said only that her arrest took place some time in February. She last played for UMMC on 29 January before the league took a two-week international break for Fiba World Cup qualifying and has been inactive on social media since 5 Feburary.
News of Griner being detained comes as Russian forces continue to bomb civilian targets on the 10th day of its invasion of Ukraine and amid heightened tensions between Moscow and the rest of the world. The US president, Joe Biden, has condemned the invasion of Ukraine and pushed a raft of sanctions with other world leaders against Moscow, which he says have left Putin isolated.
On Saturday, the US state department urged US citizens to leave Russia immediately, re-issuing its travel advisory.
Earlier Saturday, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the president of Ukraine, held an hour-long video call with United States senators in which he called for more support to defend his country from Russia’s invasion.
Rick Scott, a Republican, called for stronger measures against both Russia and its ally Belarus, tweeting that the US should take “EVERY action to destroy their economies”.
Griner is not the first US citizen to have been held in custody by Russian authorities as tensions between the countries have soared, prompting accusations by American officials that Moscow is using the detentions as bargaining chips for a potential prisoner exchange.
In January, Russian officials announced that US teacher Marc Fogel was earlier arrested in a Moscow airport with marijuana and cannabis, accusing the teacher of smuggling drugs into Russia and distributing them among students on a “large scale”.
That revelation followed the detention of two US Marines in separate incidents: Trevor Reed, who was charged with attacking two Russian police officers in a drunken brawl, and Paul Whelan, who was jailed after being convicted on espionage charges.
John Sipher, a national security analyst and veteran of the CIA’s clandestine service, pointed to the “decimated” state of the US embassy in Russia as a complicating factor in Griner’s case.
“There’s been a number of tit-for-tat expulsions over spy cases and the ambassador has been kicked out, so the embassy is under quite a bit of pressure with this crisis,” Sipher said Saturday in an interview on MSNBC. “I think it’s important to publicize her case because that’s the best thing that keeps her safe in this situation, because Russians have a tendency of not treating people very well who are in their custody.”
Griner, a 6ft 9in post player whose nose for the basket is matched only by her shot-blocking prowess, has played her entire nine-year WNBA career with the Mercury after an extraordinary four-year stint at Baylor University, where she led the Bears to an undefeated season and a national championship in 2012. She remains the only NCAA basketball player in history, male or female, to record 2,000 points and 500 blocked shots.
She has also been a trailblazer off the court in her own self-effacing style. Griner matter-of-factly acknowledged that she was a lesbian only days after Phoenix made her the No 1 overall pick in the 2013 WNBA draft – becoming one of the few out athletes in American sports at the time and arguably the most prominent – and later revealed that she had been silenced about her sexuality by her college coach over fears that it would hurt recruiting. (The coach did not deny the claim, saying that she was unable to respond specifically due to privacy concerns.)
One of only 11 players to have won NCAA, WNBA, EuroLeague and Olympic titles, Griner is widely regarded as one of the most dominant players of her or any generation.
