Russia announced this Thursday that it exchanged the American basketball player Brittney Griner, imprisoned for cannabis trafficking, for the famous Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, detained in USA for more than a decade.
“On December 8, 2022, at the Abu Dhabi airport, the exchange procedure of the Russian citizen Viktor Bout for the American citizen was successfully completed Brittney Grinerwho were respectively serving sentences in prisons in the United States and Russia,” reported the Russian foreign ministry and Telegram.
In Washington, the president of USA Joe Biden claimed that the basketball star “is on his way home.”
One of Brittney Griner’s attorneys in RussiaMaria Blagovolina, “confirmed that the exchange took place”, on Telegram.
Russia indicated that it was negotiating with Washington “long overdue” for Bout to be released.
Viktor Bout was sentenced to 25 years in prison by a federal judge in New York in April 2012.
The expilot and translator of the Armed forces was arrested in 2008 in Thailand in a covert operation by US agents and transferred in 2010 to USA after a long judicial battle for his extradition that caused tensions between Washington and Moscow.
Nicknamed “The Merchant of Death” by US authorities, Bout was accused of trying to sell surface-to-air missiles and other weapons to undercover US agents for alleged use by Colombian FARC guerrillas against members of the Colombian anti-narcotics warfare. USA.
Brittney Griner32, considered one of the best basketball players in the world, was arrested in February at a Moscow airport in possession of an electronic cigarette containing liquid made from cannabis oil.
In August, she was sentenced to nine years in prison for cannabis trafficking.
AFP