While the American basketball player was released on Thursday after spending a month in a Russian penal colony, footage of her detention in Mordovia, in central Russia, was broadcast by ESPN and CNN.
Videos show her with a down jacket on her back and short hair, eating in a refectory or hard at work. According to the basketball player’s lawyer, quoted by both media, she decided in particular to cut her hair, without drying it, so as not to suffer from the cold.
In the penal colony, the women were busy sewing all day. Brittney Griner, would have been deprived of it, since her fingers were considered too large for her size, explains ESPN.
His relatives quite calm
Brittney Griner’s lawyer also said her relatives expected the worst when the athlete was transferred to this colony, after spending time in a relatively secure Moscow prison.
American, black and lesbian, the basketball player could have been the target of other detainees or malicious guards in this type of environment, sometimes seen as the heir to the Soviet gulags.
According to the lawyer, who spoke to ESPN from Russia, someone was in charge of translating the colony’s rules into English so that the athlete would understand them. While inmates may be held in solitary confinement, the month Brittney Griner spent there appears to have gone relatively well, the outlet again confirms.
The basketball player was released this Thursday, in exchange for a Russian arms dealer, Viktor Bout, until now imprisoned in the United States. She had been transferred in November to a penal colony in Russia to serve her nine-year prison sentence for “drug trafficking”, after being arrested in February at a Moscow airport with a vape and liquid containing cannabis.
Source: BFM TV
