American basketball star Brittney Griner has been transferred to a penal colony in Yavas, in the Mordovia region of western Russia, her lawyers said on Thursday, ending days of speculation about her whereabouts.
Her lawyers, Maria Blagovolina and Alexander Boykov, thanked everyone who reached out to support her.
“First, on behalf of Brittney, we would like to thank everyone who has expressed love for her,” they said in a statement. “We can confirm that Brittney has begun serving her sentence on the IK-2 in Mordovia.
“We visited earlier this week. Brittney is doing as well as could be expected and trying to stay strong as she adjusts to a new environment. Considering this is a very challenging period for her, there will be no further comment from us.”
On Wednesday, the US State Department said it was in contact with Griner’s legal team and was aware of reports that she had been sent to a penal colony about a seven-hour drive southeast of Moscow.
“However, the Russian Federation has yet to provide any official notification for such a move by a US citizen, which we strongly protest. The Embassy continues to press for more information about his transfer and current location,” a spokesperson said.
Griner’s reps previously confirmed that she had been transferred from a detention center in Iksha on November 4 – and that she was destined for a penal colony – but “we don’t have any information about her exact current location or final destination.
According to standard Russian procedure, lawyers as well as the US Embassy must be notified when she arrives at her destination. Notification is made by official mail and normally takes up to two weeks to be received.”
The Olympic gold medalist and former WNBA champion is trying to stay strong after nine months apart from her loved ones, her agent, Lindsay Colas, said.
“At this time, we will not be sharing more details, but we want to express our deepest thanks to the Biden administration, the Richardson Center and everyone who has reached out to offer her words of encouragement,” she said.
Letters arrived from all over the world and she was buoyed by the support. Every letter is important and we encourage everyone to keep writing and sharing your support.”
The Richardson Center for Global Engagement “promotes global peace and dialogue by identifying and working on areas of opportunity for citizen engagement and diplomacy with countries and communities that are generally not open to more formal diplomatic channels,” says its website.
The main concern has been Griner’s health and well-being, Colas said earlier this week.
While conditions vary in Russian penal colonies, political prisoners are often placed in difficult conditions where they may be subjected to “solitary confinement or punitive stays in psychiatric units,” says the State Department’s human rights report.
Russian law also allows for forced labor in penal colonies, and in some cases prisoners were tortured to death, the report says. There are also reports of prison authorities recruiting inmates to abuse other inmates, the report adds.
The fact that Griner’s team did not know of his whereabouts earlier is not uncommon. Transfers to penal colonies are secretive processes in Russia, with relatives and lawyers often not knowing where a prisoner is being sent for several days, according to Amnesty International.
Last month, Griner lost his appeal against a nine-year drug sentence. She was arrested in February and convicted in August after acknowledging that she had vape cartridges containing marijuana. She apologized several times for bringing a small amount of the substance into the country where she played basketball.
Mordovia is the same region where American Paul Whelan is being held. The former US Marine is serving 16 years in a different penal colony on spying charges he denies.
Griner’s detention has raised concerns that she is being used as a political pawn in Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Most of Russia’s prisons are penal colonies, where inmates are housed in barracks and often put to work, according to a report by the Polish think tank Center for Eastern Studies, known as OSW. More than 800 such facilities existed in Russia in 2019, the organization said.
Built during the Soviet Union, most colonies have been compared to Soviet-era gulags; prison camps that expanded across the region during Josef Stalin’s rule in the mid-20th century.
Russia houses nearly half a million prisoners in its facilities, one of the highest rates in Europe according to the World Prison Brief, but numbers have declined in recent years – in contrast to most of the world.
The level of supervision and restrictions placed on detainees today depend on the facility to which they are sentenced. Not all require work, but several prominent dissidents, activists and foreigners who were sent to the colonies describe harrowing and difficult experiences.
Prisoners are often taken great distances across the country. Travel to the colonies is dangerous and can take up to a month, according to Amnesty International. Travel often takes place in cramped train cars, and inmates often arrive in overcrowded facilities with poor and aging infrastructure, OSW found.
“Despite several attempts to reform the prison system in Russia, they still resemble the Soviet Gulag,” the organization said. “Human rights violations and torture are common.”
Matthew Chance, Zahra Ullah, Anna Chernova, Abby Phillip and Rhea Mogul of CNN contributed to this story.
Source: CNN Brasil
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