American basketball champion Brittney Griner has been transferred to a penal colony in central Russia to serve a heavy prison sentence, despite protests from Washington which denounces a political condemnation.
The 32-year-old star, recognized as one of the best players in the world, was sentenced in August to nine years in prison for “drug trafficking”, a case with a strong geopolitical dimension which involves negotiations around an exchange of prisoners between Moscow and Washington and tensions related to the conflict in Ukraine.
After the rejection of her appeal last month, Brittney Griner had left her remand center in early November to be sent to a penal colony, where the conditions are harsher, but the exact location had not been disclosed.
“Brittney began serving her sentence at (penal colony) IK-2 in Mordovia “, a region of central Russia renowned for its prisons and its harsh climate, finally announced Thursday its Russian lawyers, Maria Blagovolina and Alexander Boïkov.
Stating in a statement that they were able to visit their client earlier this week, the lawyers said that she is “doing as well as possible and trying to stay strong and adapt to her new environment”. The player is going through a “very difficult period”, they however underlined.
Harsh conditions
Penal colony IK-2, Russian abbreviation for “correctional colony number 2”, is located in the town of Iavas in Mordovia, more than 400 km east of Moscow, and has more than 800 prisoners. Russian penal colonies are notorious for the mistreatment of their inmates, who are crammed into unsanitary barracks and often without access to adequate care.
Human rights NGOs regularly denounce the massive abuses and acts of torture committed in Russian penal colonies, inherited from the Soviet concentration camp system.
These abuses are mainly committed in men’s prisons. Still, for Griner, who was previously locked up in a remand center, this is a clear deterioration in her prison conditions.
It is also in Mordovia, in the penal colony IK-17, that a former American soldier, Paul Whelan, is detained for “espionage”. Mr Whelan’s family regularly denounce his conditions of detention, saying he is deliberately deprived of sleep and cannot receive the medical treatment he needs.
Exchange of prisoners
Brittney Griner’s nightmare began when she was arrested in February, shortly before Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine, at a Moscow airport, where the player had just landed to play with a Russian team during the American offseason, a common practice for women’s basketball players in the North American Women’s Basketball League (WNBA), who often earn more money abroad than in the United States.
The police discovered in his luggage a vaporizer and two cartridges containing a small amount of cannabis oil-based liquid, which earned him charges of “drug trafficking”.
During her trial, the player admitted to having violated Russian law, while claiming that she had taken the vaper and the cartridges by mistake. Cannabis oil is used by some top athletes to relieve chronic pain. Griner supporters denounce an excessive and politically motivated sentencing for a possible exchange of prisoners between Moscow and Washington.
According to Russian diplomatic sources, a possible prisoner exchange could concern Brittney Griner and a Russian arms trafficker detained in the United States, Viktor Bout, who is serving a 25-year prison sentence in the United States. Meanwhile, the White House ruled last week that “every minute Brittney Griner has to endure wrongful detention in Russia is a minute too long.”