U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner has been released in a prisoner swap with Russia in exchange for arms dealer Viktor Bout and was headed home. The swap was arranged after months of talks during a time of high tension between the two countries after Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine.
She is on a flight bound for Texas, Friday, December 9th. She is expected to arrive at Kelly Field in San Antonio. Griner, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, and star of the Women’s National Basketball Association’s Phoenix Mercury was arrested on Feb. 17 at a Moscow airport after vape cartridges containing cannabis oil, which is banned in Russia, were found in her luggage.
Although she had pleaded guilty at her trial said she used the cartridges to relieve pain from sports injuries and had made an “honest mistake.” Nevertheless, she was sentenced on Aug. 4 to nine years in a penal colony.
Bout is a Russian citizen who in 2012 was given a 25-year prison sentence by a U.S. court on charges related to his arms-dealing career. For almost two decades, Bout had been the world’s most notorious arms dealer, selling weapons to rogue states, rebels, and warlords in Africa, Asia, and South America