American basketball star Brittany Greiner, whom Russia sentenced to nine years in prison for a minor drug offense, was released today (Thursday) from the Russian prison and was handed over to American officials. In return, Washington released Victor Bout – who was nicknamed the “merchant of death” due to arms deals with al-Qaeda, the Taliban and armed men in Africa – and in Moscow they said that the deal for the captives took place at the airport in Abu Dhabi.
Immediately after the initial reports about the deal, US President Joe Biden, who according to the reports was deeply involved in the deal and approved it, announced that he spoke with Greiner on the phone: “She is safe. She is on the plane. She’s on her way home,” he tweeted. In his tweet, he published photos in which he was seen talking with Greiner from the Oval Office in the White House, next to Greiner’s partner, Sherl, who appeared to be smiling and happy. Vice President Kamala Harris was also seen in them. Although the US hoped to include a prisoner in the deal Another American, former army officer Paul Whelan, who was convicted of espionage in Russia and was sentenced there to 16 years in prison, was not included in it and remained in a Russian prison.
The 32-year-old Greiner is a star of the Phoenix Mercury team of the WNBA (professional women’s league in the USA), and has two Olympic gold medals under her belt. She came to Russia at the beginning of the year to play for a while in the Russian league, while the American league is on hiatus. On February 17, Seven days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and when relations between Moscow and the West were already on the verge of an explosion, she was arrested at Sheremetyevo Airport in the Russian capital after cannabis oil was found in her luggage.
Greiner was indicted for drug smuggling, and during her trial she admitted that there were containers of cannabis oil in her suitcase, but she also testified that she put them by mistake when she packed it hastily and that she had no criminal intent. During the trial, her lawyers presented statements indicating that the cannabis oil was intended to treat the pain Greiner suffers from due to injuries from her sports career, although it should be noted that medical cannabis is also illegal in Russia, and not just the use of cannabis for recreational purposes. She was convicted in early August, and sent to nine years in prison in a penal colony near Moscow.
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Victor Bott, the “merchant of death” that the US released in the deal
(Photo: AFP)
In the West, it was estimated that her prosecution and conviction were primarily intended to allow the Kremlin to use her as a bargaining chip and to force the US to release Russian prisoners from its prisons. In recent months, there have been talks between the parties for a prisoner exchange deal, and even then it was reported that the deal was expected to include the arms dealer Victor Bot – But for a long time, until today, it was believed that the talks on this deal had reached an impasse. The CNN network reported this evening that the deal that went into effect today took shape only in the last few days and was finalized in the last 48 hours, and a senior official in the American administration told the network that Biden was “involved personally and regularly” in contacts. The source said that “this is the only deal we could do at the moment”, referring to the fact that it did not include Paul Whelan.
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Paul Whelan who was convicted of espionage, and remains in a Russian prison
(Photo: Reuters)
Only half an hour after the deal was revealed, Biden went to the cameras in the White House and gave a special statement: “After months of unjustified detention in Russia, while being held in unbearable conditions, Brittany will soon return to the arms of her loved ones, in whose arms she was supposed to be all this time. We worked on This day for a long time. We never stopped pressing for her release. It required intense and extremely careful negotiations.” Biden noted that Greiner’s spirits were up now, but added that she had undergone “unnecessary trauma” in the Russian prison.
The president also addressed the fact that the deal did not include Whelan, saying that he had not “forgotten” him and that he would never give up on his release. He emphasized that it was not a “choice between which Americans to bring home”, and mentioned that earlier this year a prisoner exchange deal was implemented in which Russia released the American prisoner Trevor Reed, and that deal did not include Greiner. “Unfortunately, for reasons that are completely illegitimate, Russia treats Paul’s case differently than Brittany’s.” He noted that his government maintains contact with Whelan’s family. This evening it was reported that official American representatives talked at length today with Whelan himself.
Immediately after Biden, Cheryl, Greiner’s wife, spoke in front of the cameras, and she thanked Biden for his efforts: “In the last nine months, you have all witnessed the darkest moments of my life, so I stand here overwhelmed with emotions, but the most important emotion is that I now feel sincere gratitude to the president Biden and his entire administration.” Referring to Paul Whelan, she added: “Today my family is complete, but as you all know, there are so many families that are not complete.”
The Whelan family also welcomed the deal, even though it did not include him: Whelan’s brother, David, said that “the Biden administration made the right decision in bringing Greiner home and making this deal possible – instead of waiting for one that wasn’t going to happen.” However, he expressed great despair at the fact that this time too, as after the previous deal in April in which Trevor Reed was released, his brother remained in Russian prison – and expressed fear for his safety: “And now what? How do you continue to survive, day after day, when you know that your government has failed twice in its attempt Release you from a foreign prison? I can’t imagine that he would hold out any hope that any government would negotiate his release at this point. The US government clearly has no concessions that the Russian government would accept for Paul Whelan. So Paul will remain a prisoner until that changes.”
The 55-year-old Bout, who was released in exchange for Greiner, was sent a decade ago to 25 years in prison in the United States. Bout, a former officer in the Soviet Union’s Air Force, was arrested in 2008 in Thailand – in an operation in which American agents posed as rebels from the Colombian FARC organization. The same agents Bott was told that they wanted to upgrade the weapons arsenal of the Marxist rebel organization. Bott, accused for decades of selling weapons to regimes controlled by dictators who were involved in some of the world’s most brutal wars, was convicted of conspiring to sell weapons to Colombian rebels. He was the inspiration for the movie “The Minister of War” released in -2005, in which Nicolas Cage starred, and the nickname “merchant of death” was given to him by the former British minister Peter Hain, due to his arms sales to Liberia and Angola. The New York Times stated that he was also accused of selling arms to the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and militants in Rwanda.
Bout was born in 1967 in Tajikistan, which was then part of the Soviet Union, and according to reports he is fluent in several languages and served as a translator in the Soviet army, including in Angola. He testified that he attended a language school in Moscow used to train military intelligence officers. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, he took control of a stockpile of cheap Soviet-made weapons that could be sold to Africa, Asia and South America, and from his home base in the United Arab Emirates he used a fleet of Soviet-era aircraft to export these weapons, according to the evidence “to anyone who was willing to pay.”
This evening, a few hours after the announcement of the deal, the President of the United Arab Emirates and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, said that they led the mediation efforts that gave birth to the deal. Both countries emphasized that the agreement reflects the excellent relations they have with both Washington and Moscow. For Saudi Arabia, this is another important diplomatic achievement in the field of prisoner exchange, after in September it managed to bring about the release of several foreign fighters who fell into Russian captivity during the war in Ukraine.