American basketball star Brittney Griner has been moved to a penal colony in Java, in the western Russian region of Mordovia, her lawyers said Thursday, ending days of speculation about her whereabouts.
Her lawyers, Maria Blagovolina and Alexander Boykov, thanked everyone who reached out for support.
“First, on behalf of Brittney, we would like to thank everyone who expressed their care for her,” they said in a statement. “We can confirm that Brittney has started serving her sentence at IK-2 in Mordovia.
“We visited her early this week. Brittney is doing as well as you’d expect and trying to stay strong as she adjusts to a new environment. Given that this is a very difficult time for her, there will be no further comment from us.”
On Wednesday, the US State Department said it was in contact with Griner’s legal team and was aware of reports that she had been sent to a penal colony, about a seven-hour drive southeast of Moscow.
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“However, the Russian Federation has yet to provide any official notice of such a move by an American citizen, which we strongly protest. The Embassy continued to press for more information about the transfer and its current location,” a spokesman said.
Griner’s representatives previously confirmed that she had been transferred from a detention center in Iksha on November 4 – and that she was destined for a penal colony – but “we have no information on her exact current location or final destination. According to standard Russian procedure, lawyers, as well as the US Embassy, should be notified upon her arrival at her destination. The notice is given by official mail and usually takes up to two weeks to be received.”
The Olympic gold medalist and one-time WNBA champion is trying to stay strong after nine months apart from loved ones, her agent, Lindsay Colas, said.
“At this time, we will not share any further details, but we want to express our deepest thanks to the Biden administration, the Richardson Center and everyone who reached out to offer her words of encouragement,” he said. Letters have poured in from all over the world and BG has been boosted by the support. Every letter counts and we encourage everyone to keep writing and sharing your support.”
The Richardson Center for Global Engagement “advances global peace and dialogue by identifying and working in areas of opportunity for engagement and citizen diplomacy with countries and communities not typically open to more formal diplomatic channels,” its website states.
The primary concern was Griner’s health and well-being, Colas said earlier this week.
While conditions vary among Russian penal colonies, political prisoners are often placed in harsh conditions where they can be subjected to “isolation or punitive stays in psychiatric units,” the State Department’s human rights report said.
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Russian law also allows forced labor in penal colonies, and in some cases, inmates have been tortured to death, the report said. There are also reports of prison authorities recruiting inmates to abuse other inmates, the report added.
That Griner’s team didn’t know her whereabouts ahead of time is not unusual. Transfers to penal colonies are secretive processes in Russia, with relatives and lawyers often unaware of where a prisoner is being sent for several days, according to Amnesty International.
Last month, Griner lost her appeal against her nine-year drug sentence. He was arrested in February and sentenced in August after admitting possession of vapor cartridges containing cannabis. He has repeatedly apologized for bringing a small amount of the substance into the country, where he played basketball in the offseason.
Mordovia is the same region where American Paul Whelan is being held. The former US Marine is serving 16 years in a different penal colony on espionage charges he denies.
Griner’s detention has raised concerns that she is being used as a political pawn in Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Most of Russia’s prisons are penal colonies, where inmates are housed in barracks and often put to work, according to a report by the Poland-based think tank the Center for Oriental Studies, known as OSW. More than 800 such facilities existed across Russia as of 2019, the agency said.
Built during the Soviet Union, most colonies have been likened to Soviet-era gulags. prison camps that expanded throughout the region during Joseph Stalin’s rule in the mid-20th century.
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Russia houses nearly half a million prisoners in its facilities, one of the highest in Europe, according to World Prison Brief, but the numbers have fallen in recent years – unlike most of the world.
The level of supervision and restrictions imposed on prisoners today depends on the facility in which they are sentenced. Not all require labor, but several high-profile dissidents, activists and foreign nationals who have been sent to colonies describe painful and difficult experiences.
Detainees are often taken vast distances across the country. Travel to colonies is dangerous and can take up to a month, according to Amnesty International. Travel often takes place in cramped train cars and inmates often arrive in overcrowded facilities with poor and aging infrastructure, OSW found.
“Despite many attempts to reform the prison system in Russia, they still resemble Soviet gulags,” the organization said. “Human rights violations and torture are common.”
