Russian Justice will address next October 25 the appeal filed by the American basketball player and WNBAm star Brittney Griner , sentenced in August to 9 years in prison for drug possession and smuggling.
The Moscow Region Court will be in charge of studying the appeal, a court spokeswoman informed local agencies . The hearing, in which the justice of the sentence issued on August 4 by the urban court of Khimki, Moscow, will be assessed, will start at 06: 06 am (4: 00 am New York time).
At the time the sentence was issued, the judge considered the athlete “guilty of committing the crime” stipulated by the articles 228 and 229.1 of the Russian penal code (possession and trafficking of drugs).
The world and Olympic champion with the United States team, who was arrested last February at a Moscow airport with cannabis oil in her suitcase , accepted the ruling, although during the trial he asked for clemency tr so admit your mistake.
However, his lawyers, who questioned the cannabis samples taken by the Russian police after his arrest as evidence, appealed the ruling on 15 of August.
Russian legislation punishes with a maximum of ten years in prison the crime committed by the American, 2.06 meters and who plays in the Russian team UMMC of Yekaterinburg.
The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, proposed to his Russian colleague, Sergei Lavrov, the exchange of Griner and fellow American Paul Whelan, sentenced to 15 years for espionage, for the “merchant of death”, the Russian Victor But, who is serving 25 years in jail in a US prison.
The White House rejected the “opponent” of Russia, who wanted to include a second Russian prisoner in the exchange, the Chechen Vadí m Krásikov, according to CNN.
In mid-September, the president of the United States, Joe Biden, who has called for Griner’s immediate release, received the basketball player’s relatives in the Oval Office of the White House.
USA. He maintains that he has made a “serious proposal for Griner and Whelan to return home”, but argues that Moscow has not yet responded.
Shortly after, the Russian Foreign Ministry He assured that he is willing to negotiate at any time the exchange of Russian prisoners for Americans.
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