Brittney Griner is appealing her drug conviction in Russia, lawyer says

The defense team for Brittney Griner, the American basketball star sentenced to prison in Russia for drug trafficking, said on Monday that she had appealed the verdict as Russian diplomats began to talk more openly about a potential prisoner swap with the United States.

Maria Blagovolina, a partner at the law firm who represented Ms Griner, upheld the appeal of the verdict, which was handed down this month by the City Court in Khimki, near Moscow. It was not immediately clear how soon an appeal could be heard.

Ms. Griner's legal team said the appeal, which was expected, would most likely take up to three months to adjudicate. Russian officials have said all legal avenues must be exhausted before a potential swap can be discussed.

But over the weekend, Aleksandr Darchiev, a senior Russian diplomat, said political negotiations with the United States were already underway, including talks about Russians held by the United States whose release Moscow is demanding in order to secure Mrs Griner's freedom.

"The discussion on the rather sensitive topic of prisoner exchange of Russian and American citizens is ongoing along the channels established by the two presidents," said Mr. Darchiev, director of the North American department at the Russian Foreign Ministry, told TASS, a state news agency.

A Russian including Moscow asking for release, Mr Darchiev confirmed, is Viktor Bout, a jailed Russian arms dealer. archiev said Ms. Griner as well as Paul Whelan, a former US marine convicted by a Moscow court of espionage charges, have been discussed as potential candidates for an exchange.

The Biden administration offered to free Mr. Bout in exchange for Ms. Griner and Mr. Whelan, according to people familiar with the proposal. Lawyers for Ms Griner said earlier they could withdraw the appeal in case it interfered with the exchange process.

Aleksandr Boikov, one of the Lawyers for Ms Griner, said her defense team argued in the appeal that the Khimki court ignored "serious procedural violations during the detention, the extraction of physical evidence, the arrest and the investigation".

He said these apparent violations, which were detailed in testimony, meant Ms Griner could have been acquitted on procedural grounds, even despite his guilty plea. The verdict "did not correspond to current legal practice in Russian courts," said Boikov, who works at the Moscow Legal Center.

"It was d 'unprecedented harshness,'” he wrote in a message to The New York Times.

The case of Ms. Griner, who was arrested at a Russian airport in February and accused of carrying vape cartridges with the hash oil in her luggage, became entangled in deteriorating relations between Russia and the United States after Moscow invaded Ukraine this month. here, a Russian judge sentenced Ms Griner