SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Brittney Griner returned to the United States early Friday, nearly 10 months after the basketball star’s detention in Russia made her the most high-profile American jailed abroad and set off a political firestorm.
Griner's status as an openly gay Black woman, her prominence in women's basketball and her imprisonment in a country where authorities have been hostile to the LBGTQ community heightened concerns for her and brought tremendous attention to the case.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine after her arrest complicated matters further. The deal announced Thursday that saw Griner exchanged for notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout achieved a top goal for President Joe Biden.
But the U.S. failed to win freedom for another American, Paul Whelan, who has been jailed for nearly four years. Biden’s authorization to release Bout, the Russian felon once nicknamed “the Merchant of Death,” underscored the heightened urgency that his administration faced to get Griner home, particularly after the recent resolution of her criminal case on drug charges and her subsequent transfer to a penal colony.