Atleta USA, rehen rusa

De atleta estrella a peón político: Griner va a juicio en Rusia La estrella del baloncesto estadounidense Brittney Griner ha soportado meses en una prisión rusa y la amenaza de años más, una moneda de cambio en tiempos de guerra entre Moscú y Washington. regala este articulo Brittney Griner llegando a la corte el viernes. Brittney Griner llegando a la corte el viernes.Crédito...Kirill Kudryavtsev/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Antón TroianovskiIván Nechepurenko PorAntón TroianovskiyIván Nechepurenko 1 de julio de 2022 Regístrese para el informe de guerra Rusia-Ucrania. Todas las noches, le enviaremos un resumen de las noticias más importantes del día. Recíbelo en tu bandeja de entrada. Brittney Griner llegó a Rusia en febrero para jugar baloncesto, una de las mayores estrellas de este deporte. Llegó a un tribunal en las afueras de Moscú el viernes como algo completamente diferente: una posible moneda de cambio en el tenso enfrentamiento de Rusia con Occidente por la guerra en Ucrania, descrita por sus partidarios como rehén del Kremlin. Después de más de cuatro meses languideciendo en una prisión rusa y sin hablar ruso, la Sra. Griner, de 31 años, fue a juicio, acusada de introducir al país cartuchos de vaporizador con rastros (0,7 gramos, dijo el fiscal) de aceite de cannabis. En un sistema legal que rara vez declara culpables a los acusados, ella enfrenta hasta 10 años en una colonia penal si es declarada culpable. El arresto de la Sra. Griner el 17 de febrero, una semana antes del comienzo de la invasión rusa de Ucrania, la llevó a las fauces de la geopolítica cuando el presidente Vladimir V. Putin se enfrentaba a un decidido esfuerzo occidental para ayudar a Ucrania a contraatacar. Ha sido promocionada en los medios estatales rusos como un activo que podría cambiarse por un traficante de armas ruso sentado en una prisión estadounidense. ANUNCIO PUBLICITARIO Continuar leyendo la historia principal Aunque las leyes de drogas de Rusia pueden conllevar penas severas, un extranjero atrapado con una pequeña cantidad por lo general no enfrentaría más de un mes de cárcel, una multa y la deportación, pero el gobierno de Putin tiene un largo historial de uso de la detención para ejercer influencia internacional, a veces para obtener la liberación de un ruso detenido en el extranjero. Con poca información para continuar, los partidarios de la Sra. Griner se preocupan por su salud física y emocional y por cómo la tratan: una estadounidense negra abiertamente gay en un país culturalmente conservador que ha adoptado leyes contra los homosexuales , tiene pocos negros y ve Estados Unidos como su némesis. Citan su aislamiento lingüístico y la casi certeza de que está retenida en condiciones que no están diseñadas para adaptarse a su estatura de 6 pies 9 pulgadas. “She’s telling me she’s OK,” her wife, Cherelle, who has been able to communicate with her only through letters, said in a recent radio interview with the Rev. Al Sharpton. Cherelle Griner said Brittney Griner had vowed, “I won’t let them break me.” Image El juzgado en Khimki, en las afueras de Moscú, donde la Sra. Griner está siendo juzgada. The courthouse in Khimki, outside of Moscow, where Ms. Griner is on trial.Credit...Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters But Brittney Griner is struggling, her wife said. “She’s a human, she’s there terrified, she’s there alone,” Cherelle Griner said. “It’s not just that she can’t speak to her loved ones. She can’t speak to anyone because she doesn’t speak the language. It’s inhumane on all types of levels.” ANUNCIO PUBLICITARIO Continuar leyendo la historia principal In a court in Khimki, outside of Moscow, on Friday, Ms. Griner cut an incongruous figure, as always towering above everyone else as she was led in, her long, tattooed arms cuffed together and cuffed to the arm of a guard. For the first day of her trial, she wore a Jimi Hendrix T-shirt and athletic shoes without laces. She sat in the defendant’s cage with a bottle of water and a bag of cookies, and told a reporter that detention was hard because of the language barrier and a lack of exercise, Reuters reported. The session, conducted in Russian with a few journalists and three U.S. embassy officials present, was quickly adjourned after some expected witnesses failed to show up. The trial is set to resume next Thursday. A prosecutor told the court that Ms. Griner was “aware enough” that transporting narcotics into Russia was forbidden, according to the state-owned Russian news agency Tass. Ms. Griner said that she understood the charges but would express her response to them later, the agency said. ANUNCIO PUBLICITARIO Continuar leyendo la historia principal Cherelle Griner and others have questioned whether the Biden administration is doing enough to secure Brittney Griner’s release, a view the State Department seemed determined on Friday to dispel. Elizabeth Rood, the chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, attended the trial and talked with reporters afterward. “I did have the opportunity to speak with Ms. Griner in the courtroom,” Ms. Rood said. “She is doing as well as can be expected in these difficult circumstances and asked me to convey that she is in good spirits and is keeping up the faith.” “The Russian Federation has wrongfully detained Ms. Griner,” she said, adding, “the U.S. government at the very highest levels is working very hard to bring Ms. Griner as well as all wrongfully detained U.S. citizens safely home.” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken tweeted, “We — and I personally — have no higher priority than bringing her and other wrongfully detained Americans” back home. ANUNCIO PUBLICITARIO Continuar leyendo la historia principal Image Marina Mabrey de Dallas Wings de la WNBA usando zapatos con las iniciales “BG” en apoyo de la Sra. Griner durante un juego el mes pasado. Marina Mabrey of the W.N.B.A.’s Dallas Wings wearing shoes with the initials “BG” in support of Ms. Griner during a game last month.Credit...Tony Gutierrez/Associated Press In a news conference on Friday, Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, denied that the case was politically motivated, or that the government was even involved. “Only the court can pass a verdict,” he said. But reports in Russian state media indicate that Moscow sees Ms. Griner as a valuable asset in its confrontation with the United States, which is leading Western efforts to help Ukraine resist the Russian invasion. Tass reported in May that officials were in talks to exchange Ms. Griner for Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer who is serving a 25-year sentence in a U.S. federal prison for conspiring to sell weapons to people who said they planned to kill Americans. In April, the Biden administration secured the release of Trevor R. Reed, a former U.S. Marine held for two years in Russia on what his family said were bogus charges of assault, in a swap for a Russian pilot sentenced to a lengthy prison term in the United States on cocaine trafficking charges. ANUNCIO PUBLICITARIO Continuar leyendo la historia principal American officials have not confirmed any talks about exchanging Ms. Griner. The Kremlin has pressed for years for the release of Mr. Bout, but U.S. officials are reluctant to take any steps that could be seen as risking the safety of Americans. Photos and videos have offered brief public glimpses of Ms. Griner arriving in court and leaving. Fans scrutinize the images, which some have described as heartbreaking, for clues to her well-being in the expressions behind her round glasses. Legal experts say Ms. Griner’s trial was all but certain to end in a conviction despite the clamor in the United States for her release. Her lawyer, Aleksandr Boikov, said this week that he expected the trial to last up to two months. She has been held in Correctional Colony No. 1, or IK-1, in the village of Novoye Grishino, a 50-mile drive from central Moscow — a former orphanage, converted a decade ago to hold women serving prison sentences or awaiting trial. Video footage of the prison available online shows tall, gray walls, old prison bars and a rusty monument to Lenin in the courtyard. ANUNCIO PUBLICITARIO Continuar leyendo la historia principal Image La colonia penal 1 en Novoye Grishino, donde se encuentra detenida la Sra. Griner, en enero de 2020. The Penal Colony 1 in Novoye Grishino, where Ms. Griner is being held, in January 2020.Credit...Dimitar Dilkoff/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The Russian authorities have not disclosed Ms. Griner’s whereabouts, but The New York Times was able to identify the prison from a photograph published online by a visitor, and the location was confirmed by a person familiar with the case. What to Know About Brittney Griner’s Detention in Russia Card 1 of 5 What happened? In February, Russian authorities detained Brittney Griner, an American basketball player, on drug charges, after she was stopped at an airport near Moscow. Since then, her detention has been repeatedly extended. A Russian court said Griner’s trial will begin on July 1. Why is she being detained? Officials in Russia said they detained Griner after finding vape cartridges that contained hashish oil in her luggage. The officials said a criminal case has been opened into the large-scale transportation of drugs, which can carry a sentence of up to 10 years. Why was she in Russia? Griner was in Russia playing for an international team during the W.N.B.A. off-season. Trading rest for overseas competition is common among the league’s players for many reasons, but often the biggest motivation is money. Does this have anything to do with Ukraine? Griner’s detention comes during an inflamed standoff between Russia and the United States over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but it is still unclear whether Russia might have targeted Griner as leverage against the United States. How is the United States approaching the situation? In March, U.S. officials were finally able to see Griner and said she is doing well. Weeks later, the State Department subsequently said that it had determined she was “wrongfully detained.” In a letter sent to President Biden in June, Griner’s supporters urged him to strike a deal for her release. For Ms. Griner, every day there looks pretty much the same, said Yekaterina Kalugina, a journalist and member of a public prison monitoring group who has visited Ms. Griner in the prison. (She said that Ms. Griner’s prison mattress was too small for someone her size.) The inmates wake up, have breakfast in their cell — usually some basic food — and then go for a walk in the prison’s courtyard, which is covered by a net. The rest of the day is filled with reading books — Ms. Griner has been reading Dostoyevsky in translation, for instance — and watching television, though all of the channels are in Russian, Ms. Kalugina said. ANUNCIO PUBLICITARIO Continuar leyendo la historia principal The cell has a separate private washroom, she said, something of a novelty for Russian prisons. They are allowed to shower only twice a week. Thousands of Russian women have passed through it, along with at least one other well-known foreigner: Naama Issachar, an Israeli-American arrested in April 2019 when the Russian police said they had found 9.5 grams — one-third of an ounce — of marijuana in her luggage as she was connecting at a Moscow airport. Ms. Issachar was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison on drug possession and smuggling charges, and Israeli officials and her family said the Kremlin had tied her fate to that of a Russian being held in Israel. No exchange was made — Israel extradited the Russian detainee to the United States to face computer crime charges — but Mr. Putin, who was cultivating ties to Israel, pardoned Ms. Issachar 10 months after she was arrested. In a telephone interview from Israel, her mother, Yaffa Issachar, said that her daughter had cried when she heard about Ms. Griner’s case, telling her: “I know what she’s going through now.” ANUNCIO PUBLICITARIO Continuar leyendo la historia principal The mother said that Naama Issachar had been treated relatively well by her cellmates, but that she feared that Ms. Griner, as a gay woman, could be treated worse because of Russia’s conservative attitudes and discriminatory laws on homosexuality. Ms. Ishaffar suggested that Ms. Griner’s family find a priest who could visit her. “There is somebody watching them,” she said, “but at least it’s a human she can talk to.” Ms. Griner, who plays center for the Phoenix Mercury of the W.N.B.A., is a seven-time league All-Star, a two-time Olympic gold medalist and the first openly gay athlete signed to an endorsement contract by Nike. Image Aerial Powers de la Minnesota Lynx de la WNBA con una camiseta en apoyo de la Sra. Griner antes de un partido el mes pasado. Aerial Powers of the W.N.B.A.’s Minnesota Lynx wearing a shirt in support of Ms. Griner before a game last month. Credit...Carlos González/Star Tribune, vía Associated Press ANUNCIO PUBLICITARIO Continuar leyendo la historia principal But female basketball players are paid a fraction of what their male counterparts make in the United States, so Ms. Griner, like many others, has also played during the W.N.B.A. off-season in overseas leagues where the contracts are far more lucrative. She played for two seasons in China, and since 2014 she has played in Russia, for UMMC Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains. On Feb. 17, she landed at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport, where her bags were searched. She never made it to the Urals. Michael Crowley , Isabel Kershner , Jonathan Abrams y Tania Ganguli contribuyeron con el reportaje . ADVERTISEMENT Continuar leyendo la historia principal Oferta especial: Suscríbete para 2 € 0,50 € a la semana. Gracias por leer El Tiempo.