{"id":22971,"date":"2022-08-04T12:19:35","date_gmt":"2022-08-04T16:19:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=22971"},"modified":"2022-08-04T12:19:35","modified_gmt":"2022-08-04T16:19:35","slug":"brittney-griner-basketball-star-jailed-in-russia-for-nine-years-on-drug-charges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2022\/08\/04\/brittney-griner-basketball-star-jailed-in-russia-for-nine-years-on-drug-charges\/","title":{"rendered":"Brittney Griner: Basketball star jailed in Russia for nine years on drug charges"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Russian court has sentenced US basketball star Brittney Griner to nine years in prison on drug charges.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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She was also ordered to pay a fine of one million roubles (\u00a313,430; $16,300).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Griner pleaded guilty to drug charges but has denied deliberately breaking the law.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The 31-year-old Olympic gold medallist was detained in February at an airport near Moscow when vape cartridges containing cannabis oil were found in her luggage.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Cannabis is illegal in Russia.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Griner’s defence team said they would appeal against Thursday’s verdict by the court in Khimki, near Moscow.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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US President Joe Biden said in a statement that Russia was wrongfully detaining Griner and called for her to be released immediately.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It is unclear how long she will actually spend behind bars, as the US and Russia have been discussing a potential prisoner swap that could involve the basketball player, the BBC’s Russia editor Steve Rosenberg says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Reports in US media suggest imprisoned Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout – known as the Merchant of Death – could be transferred by Washington to the Russian authorities as part of the deal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Russian prosecutors had earlier asked for a nine-and-a-half-year prison term for Griner.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Reading the verdict, the presiding judge in Khimki said she took into account the fact that the American had already spent a considerable time in detention.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Russian court has sentenced US basketball star Brittney Griner to nine years in prison on drug charges. She was also ordered to pay a fine of one million roubles (\u00a313,430; $16,300). Griner pleaded guilty […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22972,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[109,2,3,6],"tags":[8589,770,442],"class_list":{"0":"post-22971","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headline","8":"category-news","9":"category-usa","10":"category-world","11":"tag-khimki","12":"tag-moscow","13":"tag-russia","14":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22971"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22974,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22971\/revisions\/22974"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}