SAN ANTONIO (AP) \u2014 Brittney Griner has returned to the United States, nearly 10 months after the basketball star\u2019s detention in Russia made her the most high-profile American jailed abroad and set off a political firestorm. Griner\u2019s status as an openly gay Black woman, her prominence in women\u2019s basketball and her imprisonment in a country where authorities have been hostile to the LBGTQ community brought tremendous attention to her case. Moscow\u2019s invasion of Ukraine after her arrest complicated matters further. A deal announced Thursday saw Griner exchanged for notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout. Griner was seen getting off a plane that landed Friday in Texas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Previously<\/p>\n\n\n\n
WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Russia has freed WNBA star Brittney Griner in a dramatic high-level prisoner exchange, with the U.S. releasing notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. The swap was confirmed by American and Russian officials. President Joe Biden tweeted that \u201cMoments ago I spoke to Brittney Griner. She is safe. She is on a plane. She is on her way home.”<\/strong> The Russian Foreign Ministry also confirmed the swap, saying in a statement carried by Russian news agencies that the exchange took place in Abu-Dhabi and that Bout has been flown home. The exchange still left behind an American who’s been jailed for nearly four years in Russia. Griner is a two-time Olympic gold medalist who’s been imprisoned for months on drug charges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SAN ANTONIO (AP) \u2014 Brittney Griner has returned to the United States, nearly 10 months after the basketball star\u2019s detention in Russia made her the most high-profile American jailed abroad and set off a political firestorm. Griner\u2019s status as an openly gay Black woman, her prominence in women\u2019s basketball and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":264391,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-264388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=264388"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":264503,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264388\/revisions\/264503"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/264391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=264388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=264388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=264388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}