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THE United States stepped up its push Friday for consular entry to Brittney Griner the Girls’s Nationwide Basketball Affiliation star who’s detained in Russia on allegations of drug smuggling, as a member of a Russian state-backed jail monitoring group stated Griner was faring nicely behind bars.
Ekaterina Kalugina advised The Related Press on Friday that she visited Griner on Monday on the pretrial detention facility exterior of Moscow the place she’s being held and spoke to her with the assistance of a cellmate who speaks Russian and English and served as an interpreter.
“Her bodily situation is ok, she’s holding up high-quality, and I’d even say that she is pretty calm and isn’t anxious,” Kalugina stated of the Phoenix Mercury star, whose authorized ordeal comes amid rigidity between Russia and the US over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Kalugina is a member of the general public monitoring fee that visits lockups in that a part of Russia. Such commissions, which function all through the nation, place themselves as impartial however hardly ever problem Russian authorities on main points.
Griner’s attorneys have been visiting her frequently and have introduced her care packages that embody meals and private gadgets, however she hadn’t met with a US consul but, Kalugina stated.
The State Division issued an announcement Friday demanding entry to Griner, who performs professionally in Russia through the WNBA offseason.
“We’re carefully engaged on this case and in frequent contact with Brittney Griner’s authorized staff. We insist the Russian authorities present consular entry to all US citizen detainees in Russia, together with these in pre-trial detention, as Brittney Griner is,” it stated.
“We’ve repeatedly requested for consular entry to those detainees and have persistently been denied entry,” it added.
Griner was detained after arriving at a Moscow airport, reportedly in mid-February, after Russian authorities stated a search of her baggage revealed vape cartridges that allegedly contained oil derived from hashish, which may carry a most penalty of 10 years in jail.
Russian state information company Tass reported Thursday {that a} court docket had prolonged Griner’s pretrial detention to Might 19.
Kalugina stated that when she met with Griner, Griner made no complaints about her therapy on the facility and stated she was getting an hour a day to spend in an train yard.
Kalugina stated Griner is being held on the facility the place an Israeli lady, Naama Issachar, hung out earlier than Russian President Vladimir Putin pardoned her in 2020. Russian authorities stated they discovered cannabis in Issachar’s baggage whereas she was transferring between flights in Moscow en route from India to Israel, on the similar airport the place Griner was detained. Issachar was convicted and sentenced to 7 1/2 years in jail earlier than she was freed after spending 9 months behind bars.
Griner’s authorized staff has been quietly in search of her launch and has declined to talk out in regards to the case since her arrest was made public earlier this month.
Of the hundreds of US residents arrested and jailed in prisons overseas, a small subset are designated by the US authorities as wrongfully detained—a class that affords their instances an additional degree of presidency consideration and locations them underneath the auspices of the Particular Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs on the State Division. The US authorities has not but put Griner’s case in that class.
Griner shouldn’t be the one American detained in Russia. Marine veteran Trevor Reed was sentenced to 9 years in jail in 2020 on expenses alleging that he assaulted law enforcement officials in Moscow. And Michigan company safety govt Paul Whelan is serving a 16-year sentence on espionage expenses that his household and the US authorities have stated are false. US officers have publicly referred to as for Moscow to launch them.
Picture credit: AP
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