Griner, other U.S. citizens detained in Russia should be freed
the United States.
Surely, we can all agree on that. As U.S Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee noted at a March 5 news conference demanding Griner’s release, it’s a straightforward case.
“Brittney Griner is a United States citizen. She was a guest in Russia,” Jackson Lee said.
“I don’t want to disregard a sovereign nation, but (President Vladimir) Putin has disregarded sovereign nations his entire service in this world,” the Houston Democrat explained, noting that Russia is waging a horrific war of slaughter and destruction in Ukraine — “their neighboring country that has not bothered them.”
If Russia has issues with Griner’s actions, she added, those should be dealt with diplomatically.
That’s right. And right, unfortunately, has yet to prevail in this case.
A Russian state news agency on Thursday reported that a court in Moscow has extended Griner’s detention to May 19. And on Friday, our State Department issued a statement confirming that it is “closely engaged” in this case and in frequent contact with Griner’s legal team.
“We insist the Russian government provide consular access to all U.S. citizen detainees in Russia, including those in pre-trial detention, as Brittney Griner is,” the statement said, noting that repeated requests for such access have been denied.
Her plight, we now know, began in February. Griner, the Phoenix Mercury center, was traveling to Russia because she plays for an international team during the winter, which is the WNBA’s offseason. According to Russian authorities, Griner was detained after a drug dog at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport took an interest in her luggage and a search revealed vape cartridges containing hashish oil, which is illegal in Russia.
“According to Russian authorities” is a key point in this context, and worth emphasizing. These authorities, with the Russian Federal Customs Service, didn't even specify how much hashish oil Griner was allegedly carrying — a “significant” amount, they said — or, for that matter, her name. Griner was instead identified by Russian state media, which also released her mug shot.
If convicted, she could face 10 years in prison. And Russian prosecutors are notably successful at securing convictions; whether those results are legitimate is of course a separate question.
There are, as it stands, many open questions about this entire situation. But it's a frightening one, certainly — especially since there's cause to worry about how Griner, a gay Black woman and an American citizen, is being treated.
A member of a Russian prisonmonitoring group, Ekaterina Kalugina, told the Associated Press on Friday that she saw Griner several days before at a pretrial detention facility and that the American is “holding up fine”; that's a heartening thought.
Griner is not the only U.S. citizen known to be detained in Russia on the basis of dubious charges. Trevor Reed, a U.S. Marine from North Texas, has been held since 2020 and convicted of assaulting a police officer. Another U.S. Marine, Paul Whelan, was detained in 2018 and convicted of spying.
But the detention of a Houston native has reverberated in the region. Griner emerged as a basketball phenom while playing at Nimitz High School in Aldine ISD. The Houston Chronicle's Jerome Solomon, who met her at that early stage in her career, recalls that the young star “was larger than life on the outside and a darling, sweetheart of a teenager inside.”
Griner, 31, went on to play at Baylor University, leading the team to the national title in 2012 after an undefeated season — a triumph that “meant everything,” she wrote in a 2015 essay. She recalled her first thought when the buzzer went off, making Baylor's victory official: “
Who do I go hug first? I was looking for all of those people who meant so much to me.”
Although Griner is a worldclass athlete and one of the WNBA's top players, her detention has, to date, received comparatively little media attention. That may seem like business as usual in a country with its own pathologies. But it's worth noting that those close to Griner are being circumspect, too. The WNBA, for example, has had little to say about Griner's situation, other than acknowledging it. There's evidently a concern, in some quarters, that intense public attention could exacerbate the risk to Griner or complicate the negotiations that could lead to her release.
And, for similar reasons, we don't know much about the status of any such negotiations, even though the State Department this week offered a bit more information. “There's only so much I can say given the privacy considerations at this point,” Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said, when asked about Griner's situation shortly after her detention came to light.
We do know, at least, that leaders on both sides of the aisle are advocating for Griner and other U.S. detainees. Jackson Lee noted at the news conference that she's been talking to the State Department, hoping to focus their attention on securing Griner's release. U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, a Dallas Democrat and fellow Baylor alum, is working to the same end. As Houston Republican U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw observes, Griner's detention really shows you what kind of guy Putin is, if you were still on the fence about that.
“He's literally holding AMERICAN CITIZENS captive on BS charges,” Crenshaw tweeted, adding: “Putin is the enemy.”
Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican, has been calling for Reed and Whelan's release for some time, and he exhorted President Joe Biden to meet with Reed's family when the president traveled to Fort Worth last week. (Biden subsequently had a phone call with the family.) His office confirms that the senator is in contact with the State Department about Griner's case, too.
“It looks like Putin is targeting Americans, and including some Texans, and I don't think we should step back or we should refrain from making the point that these people are being unjustly held,” Cornyn said in an appearance on Fox News last week.
The American public should be aware that Griner — and Reed, and Whelan — are being unjustly held, without access to their embassy, in a hostile foreign nation led by a “war criminal,” as Biden this week labeled Putin.
We should speak with one voice on their behalf, even if we're speaking a bit quietly.