WNBA star Brittney Griner back in U.S. following high-profile Russia jailing, prisoner swap

Brittney Griner disembarked from a plane in Texas early Friday, nearly 10 months after the basketball star was detained in Russia and became the most high-profile American jailed abroad.

Griner was exchanged for notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout. The plane carrying her touched down at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland.

The deal achieved a top goal for U.S. President Joe Biden — but 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.

Griner, who also played pro basketball in Russia, was arrested at an airport there 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.

Griner is a two-time Olympic gold medallist 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.

U.S. officials said she would be offered specialized medical services and counselling.

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