KHIMKI, Russia (Reuters) – U.S. basketball player Brittney Griner, on trial in Russia on drug charges, arrived in court on Wednesday to testify in a case that could see her face up to 10 years in prison.
The 31-year-old, a Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) star who has played in Russia during the league’s offseason, was detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport in Feb. 17 with vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage.
At the sixth hearing into her case, Griner was escorted into a courtroom by police, bending down to avoid banging her head against the doorway.
Wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt from her WNBA team, the Phoenix Mercury, Griner held up personal photographs and shook her lawyers’ hands through the bars of the defendant’s cage before taking a seat.
The case against her, heard at the Khimki District Court outside Moscow, has highlighted the strained relations between Russia and the United States which have plunged to a new post-Cold War low over the Russian military intervention in Ukraine.
Griner’s defence has argued that she was prescribed medical cannabis to alleviate the symptoms of a chronic injury, a treatment not uncommon among elite athletes in countries where the substance is allowed. It is, however, illegal in Russia.
Griner, a two-time Olympic champion, has pled guilty but denied she intended to break Russian law.
U.S. officials and prominent athletes say Griner has been wrongly detained and have called for her immediate release, saying she is being used as a political pawn to secure the release of a Russian detained in the United States or other concessions from Washington.
The Kremlin has said the case against Griner has nothing to do with politics and that she should be tried for violating the country’s laws.
(Reporting by Reuters)
