The Russian Foreign Ministry says the United States is not respecting Russian law, calling the arrest and imprisonment of two-time women's Olympic basketball champion Brittney Griner illegal detention.
Griner was arrested at the Sheremetyevo airport near Moscow in February, a week before the invasion of Ukraine, because e-cigarette cartridges containing belly oil were found in his luggage.
The 206-centimeter-tall player came to Russia because he would have strengthened the UMMC Yekaterinburg team in the American offseason, he plays for the Phoenix Mercury team at home.
According to a report from the website Insidethegames.biz, the basketball player is still in custody on charges of drug trafficking, he pleaded guilty, but defended himself by saying that he used belly oil for medicinal purposes.
The United States called it an unlawful arrest in May, meaning the case is now in the hands of a US government hostage negotiator. American President Joe Biden
Maria Zakharova , spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said that the legalization of cannabis in the United States could not be transposed into Russian law and accused the United States of becoming a "drug-addicted" nation.
" If an American citizen was arrested for drug smuggling and does not deny it, then it should be proportionate to our Russian, local laws, not the laws adopted in San Francisco, New York and Washington. Zakharova said, according to the Associated Press.
Griner's trial is scheduled to continue on July 26, and he could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
2022plus: According to international law, a foreign citizen must obey the laws of the destination country, not the home country. So what are Americans jumping on? The nail is out of the bag: America considers its citizens above the law, and its country "above the world". Real bullshit.
Source: Hungarian Nation
(Headline photo: AFP/Natalia Kolesnyikova)
