Brittney Griner’s wife has said she feels 'terrified' she’ll never see her partner again after the professional American basketball player was sentenced to nine years behind bars in Russia.
WNBA star Griner was arrested at a Russian airport back in February after police found cannabis oil cartridges in her luggage.
She pleaded guilty to drug charges in July, and was sentenced to nine years in prison a month later.
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Griner’s wife Cherelle Griner has now said she feels scared she’ll never get her back, saying it feels like her incarcerated partner is ‘stuck in a hostage situation’.
In her first interview since the sentencing in Russia, Cherelle told CBS' Gayle King that the last eight months of her life have felt like the kind of saga you only saw on the big screen.
Cherelle said: "It's like a movie for me. I'm like, 'In no world did I ever thought, you know, our president and a foreign nation president would be sitting down having to discuss the freedom of my wife.'
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"And so to me, as much as everybody's telling me a different definition of what B.G. is, it feels to me as if she's a hostage.”
When King said this must ‘scare’ her, Cherelle replied: "It terrifies me because, I mean, when you watch movies, like, sometimes those situations don't end well. Sometimes they never get the person back.”
Griner, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, was arrested at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport earlier this year after police said they found vape cartridges that contained cannabis oil in her luggage, before being convicted on 4 August.
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A Russian court is set to hear an appeal of her sentence later this month, but the White House has described this as just ‘another sham judicial proceeding’.
"I mean, this is my life and so I'm sitting there like, 'Do we get her back? Do I ever get to see my wife again?'" Cherelle continued.
“Like, what happens here? The fact that everything's so unprecedented and everything's, like, changeable I think is a really good word. Like, I feel like every day I'm hearing something new, and so it's just kind of like, it's terrifying.”
The White House has also said Biden is ordering his administration to engage with the Russian government to bring Griner home immediately.
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Topics: US News
Jess Hardiman