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Brittney Griner has returned to the United States, but left a part of her back in Russia when she was forced to shave her head.
Griner’s ten-month detention ended yesterday when she was released from Russia via a prisoner swap.
Griner’s Russian attorney Maria Blagovolina told ESPN, Griner cut her hair two Sundays ago due to the prison’s brutal conditions.
Cold temperatures in Russian showers forced Brittney Griner to cut off her long locked hair
Blagovolina added that each time Griner showered, her hair would freeze, which led to her cutting her locks off.
‘It’s very cold in there and every time she washed her hair she got cold and would get a chill,’ Blagovolina said. ‘She should have waited until New Year’s Day.’
Griner also caught the flu while incarcerated, but has been recovering from that.
Even with her hair cut off, Griner said multiple times that she was ‘happy’ to be headed home
Griner is now safe and back on American soil to be reunited with her wife Cherelle (pictured)
Griner was arrested at a Moscow airport back in February and was sentenced to nine years in prison for possession of marijuana.
The United States government conducted a prisoner swap with the Russians, getting Griner in exchange for a Russian arms dealer.
It’s unclear if or when Griner will return to the court for the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury with the season beginning May 19th against the Los Angeles Sparks.
Griner, 32, who was arrested in Russia in February on drug charges, was expected to be transferred to a nearby military facility for medical checks.
The WNBA star was swapped for ‘Merchant of Death’ Viktor Bout, 55 – who was serving a 25-year sentence in a US prison – ending what President Joe Biden called months of ‘hell’ for her and her wife.
Griner was seen getting off a plane that landed Friday at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas, after flying from the UAE where the prisoner trade took place.
‘She was in very, very good spirits when she got off the plane and appeared to be, obviously, in good health,’ White House spokesman John Kirby told MSNBC in an interview citing U.S. officials on the ground in San Antonio, Texas, where she arrived just before dawn.
American basketball star Brittney Griner landed in the US state of Texas on Friday morning (pictured), footage broadcast on CNN and Fox News showed, after she was released from a Russian prison in exchange for a notorious arms dealer
Pictured: A close-up of the WNBA star exiting the plane in Texas on Friday morning
Pictured: Griner relieved to be back on US soil after arriving in Texas on Friday
The swap deal secured the release of the most prominent American detained abroad and achieved a top goal for President Joe Biden.
It comes against a backdrop of soaring tensions over Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, and has been criticised by Republicans for handing the notorious arms dealer back to Moscow.
The U.S. also failed to win freedom for another American, Paul Whelan, who has been jailed for nearly four years – leading to criticism of Biden from his opponents.
Meanwhile, upon his arrival, Bout told Kremlin-run media on Friday that Western countries are seeking to ‘destroy’ and ‘divide’ Russia.
‘The West believes that they did not finish us off in 1990, when the Soviet Union began to disintegrate … They think that they can just destroy us again and divide Russia,’ he told state-run channel RT, known previously as Russia Today.
This is the emotional moment Joe Biden (right) told Brittney Griner’s wife Cherelle (left) that the WNBA star is finally coming home, before the pair hugged in the Oval Office
Griner is a two-time Olympic gold medalist, Baylor University All-American and Phoenix Mercury pro basketball star.
Her status as an openly gay Black woman, locked up in a country where authorities have been hostile to the LBGTQ community, injected racial, gender and social dynamics into her legal saga and brought unprecedented attention to the population of wrongful detainees in Russia.
The athlete, who also played pro basketball in Russia, was arrested at an airport there in February after Russian authorities said she was carrying vape canisters with cannabis oil. Before her conviction, the U.S. State Department declared Griner to be ‘wrongfully detained’ – a charge that Russia has sharply rejected.
These pictures taken on November 19 show where Griner is beginning to serve her sentence
The female penal colony known as IK-2 is located in the town of Yavas, 250 miles from Moscow
Following Griner’s arrest at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport in February, she pleaded guilty in July but still faced trial because admitting guilt in Russia’s judicial system does not automatically end a case.
She acknowledged in court that she possessed canisters with cannabis oil but said she had no criminal intent and she accidentally packed them. Her defense team presented written statements that she had been prescribed cannabis to treat pain.
Regardless, she was sentenced to nine years in prison, was fined the equivalent of $16,000 and served her time at the IK-2 female penal colony in the gulag town of Yavas.
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