Brittney Griner, a star WNBA participant who was taking part in for a Russian girls’s basketball crew, was arrested at a Moscow-area airport after vape cartridges had been present in her baggage.
The Customs Service confirmed to the New York Times {that a} two-time gold medal-winning athlete matching Griner’s description had been arrested on the Sheremetyevo airport, and later launched video footage of the athlete — which a Russian information company reported was Griner, and added that the arrest occurred in February — having their baggage searched at safety, the place they discovered the hashish oil-filled cartridges in a carry-on bag.
Griner was taken into custody pending additional investigation. In Russia, the transportation of medicine might carry a sentence of 10 years in jail.
The Phoenix Mercury, Griner’s WNBA crew, mentioned in a statement Saturday, “We stay in fixed contact together with her household, her illustration, the WNBA & NBA. We love and help Brittney and presently our predominant concern is her security, bodily and psychological well being, and her secure return house.”
The WNBA added, “Brittney Griner has the WNBA’s full help and our predominant precedence is her swift and secure return to america.”
USA Basketball is conscious of and intently monitoring the authorized state of affairs going through Brittney Griner in Russia. Brittney has all the time dealt with herself with the utmost professionalism throughout her lengthy tenure with USA Basketball and her security and wellbeing are our major issues.
— USA Basketball (@usabasketball) March 5, 2022
WNBA gamers like Griner, who has performed for UMMC Ekaterinburg since 2014, and her Mercury teammate Diane Taurasi — who beforehand spent 10 years taking part in within the Russian Girls’s Basketball Premier League, till 2017 — flock to Russia (and, to a lesser extent, Ukraine) throughout the WNBA offseason, as that nation presents girls basketball gamers profitable contracts that generally exceed what they’re paid in America.
Nevertheless, WNBA athletes in Ukraine all fled the country upon Russia’s invasion, with U.S. athletes in Russia doing the identical in latest days because the conflict continued. The U.S. Embassy in Moscow issued a warning to U.S. residents in Russia final week, “An growing variety of airways are cancelling flights into and out of Russia, and quite a few nations have closed their airspace to Russian airways. U.S. residents ought to think about departing Russia instantly through industrial choices nonetheless obtainable.”
