US basketball star Brittney Griner was sentenced to nine years in prison by a Russian court on Thursday on drug charges.
The judge found Griner guilty of attempting to smuggle illegal narcotics into Russia.
Griner sat inside a cage for defendants in the courtroom in Khimki, outside Moscow, and listened intently to a translator as the judge announced her verdict.
A conviction had been expected, with Griner’s advocates and US officials insisting she was being wrongfully detained by Moscow in order to extract concessions from Washington amid the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Today’s sentencing of Brittney Griner was severe by Russian legal standards and goes to prove what we have known all along, that Brittney is being used as a political pawn,” her agent Lindsay Colas said.
The WNBA player and two-time Olympic gold medalist, 31, has been held in detention since February when she was arrested at a Moscow airport with vape cartridges of hashish oil in her luggage.
Prosecutors had asked the judge on Thursday to impose a sentence of 9.5 years — just shy of the maximum sentence of 10 years.
US diplomats have proposed a prisoner swap with Russia to secure the release of the Phoenix Mercury player and Paul Whelan, who was arrested in 2018 and accused of being a spy. Washington has proposed exchanging convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout for the two Americans.
Griner pleaded guilty to the charges last month in a move that her defense attorneys hoped could grant her a more lenient sentence, but she contended that there was no criminal intent on her part.
Addressing the court on Thursday, an emotional Griner apologized for what she said was an “honest mistake.” She pleaded for leniency, saying, “I hope that in your ruling, that it doesn’t end my life here.”
