OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
An American who once spent time in a Russian prison has provided some grim first-hand facts about what WNBA star Brittney Griner is liable to face as she prepares to serve a 9-year term for a drug charge.
In an interview with CNN, Trevor Reed also commented on the nature of the charge and the resulting sentence, in his view.
“Regardless of how you feel about Brittney Griner’s case, that sentence is clearly political. There’s no denying that,” he told the network.
“Once you are convicted in Russian court, you do have a chance to go to appeals, and appeal that decision to another kangaroo court in Moscow. So after that trial, you know, depending on Brittney’s decision on whether she wants to appeal or not, she may stay in Moscow at the detention facility that she is already at until her appeals are completed,” Reed said.
“Or if she chooses not to go to appeals, they may transfer her to a forced labor camp. Considering the fact that the Russian government is considering exchanging her, they may also decide to leave her in Moscow to make it easier for her to be returned to the United States,” he added.
Prisoners who are sent to forced labor camps are generally “facing serious threats to their health” including malnutrition and a lack of access to proper medical care.
“I am hoping that there will be an exchange that we are able to get them home, so I am hoping for the best in that,” he said of Griner and former Marine Paul Whelan, who is reportedly being held on espionage charges.
Griner’s Russian attorney said late last week that her client was “devastated” with the nine-year sentence handed to her by a Russian judge.
She was sentenced on Thursday to the harsh punishment on charges of drug possession and smuggling, for less than a gram of cannabis oil, on Thursday.
She pleaded guilty to bringing vape cartridges that contained cannabis oil into Russia, which is a crime.
“She’s devastated. She is very upset and she’s honestly quite shocked, so she needs to digest what happened today,” her attorney Maria Blagovolina, a partner at Rybalkin Gortsunyan Dyakin and Partners, said to People.
Her attorney said that they intend to appeal and that “as a legal team, we need to do [the] maximum to get a shorter term. We need to use every legal opportunity that we have, and [an] appeal is one of those opportunities.”
However, the most likely scenario is that Griner and Whelan will be part of a prisoner exchange between Russia and the United States, several observers have noted, hence the harsh sentences given to both.
To that point, Russian officials last week confirmed that Moscow is in talks to swap Griner and Whelan for Viktor Bout, the notorious “Merchant of Death” arms dealer who has been imprisoned in the United States since 2010.
But a former DEA agent is sounding the alarm on this potential deal, calling it “dangerous” for the U.S. and the West.
Rob “Zach” Zachariasiewicz wrote an op-ed for USA Today and warned against making a trade of Bout for Griner.
“Bout, who is known as the ‘Merchant of Death,’ provided the fuel for conflicts across the globe. He was a critical player in the global illicit arms trade not because he could obtain weapons but because he could deliver his destructive cargo anywhere in the world through his control of a private fleet of military aircraft. And he did just that,” the former DEA agent said.
“A tremendous amount of resources and political capital were spent on the critical national security investigation into Bout’s actions. Lives were placed at risk, and tireless efforts were made. Now many voices are not being adequately considered in these deliberations over whether to free Bout in exchange for an American. Those voices include an entire generation of maimed and orphaned inhabitants of war-torn countries throughout the world, especially in Africa,” he added.
“In a recorded undercover meeting, he declared to persons he believed to be terrorist facilitators that the United States was his sworn enemy. He offered them, as part of an extensive arsenal of heavy weapons, hundreds of surface-to-air missiles to be used against U.S. military advisers and the Colombian military,” Zachariasiewicz noted further.
“Negotiating for Bout’s release is a feckless and shortsighted foreign policy. Such actions merely encourage our adversaries to engage in the kidnapping, illegal detention, and ransoming of American citizens throughout the world,” he wrote.
