When Russian authorities removed Brittney Griner from a jail outside Moscow almost two weeks ago and transferred her to an undisclosed prison facility, her family went days without knowing where she was going or when she would get there.
Griner has begun serving the remainder of her nine-year sentence at a remote penal colony 300 miles southeast of Moscow, the American basketball star’s defense attorneys said Thursday in a statement.
“Considering that this is a very challenging period for her, there will be no further comments from us,” Blagovolina and Boykov said. When a Moscow regional court rejected Griner’s last-gasp appeal last month, it signaled that the eight-time WNBA All-Star would soon have to endure somewhere worse than the Novoye Grishino pre-trial detention center where she had been held up to that point. Her sentence called for her to be transferred to a penal colony, where conditions can be more brutal and inmates are required to work long hours doing menial tasks for little pay.
“I can confirm that our Russian legal team has seen Brittney at penal colony IK-2 in Mordovia,” Griner’s agent, Lindsay Colas, said in a statement Thursday. “Despite the fact she is alone and now nearing her ninth month in detention separated from her loved ones, she is trying to stay strong.
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