In a handwritten word posted to Instagram, WNBA star Brittney Griner thanked supporters for writing to her whereas she was imprisoned in Russia and urged them to do the identical for Paul Whelan, an American who stays incarcerated within the nation.
Griner, who was launched from custody after U.S. and Russian officers agreed on a prisoner swap earlier this month, stated Wednesday that the letters she obtained throughout her 10-month imprisonment helped her keep optimistic all through the ordeal.
“Your letters helped me to not lose hope throughout a time the place I used to be filled with remorse and susceptible in methods I may have by no means imagined. Thanks, from the underside of my coronary heart. Due to you I by no means misplaced hope,” she wrote.
“Your letters had been additionally larger than uplifting me,” she continued. “They confirmed me the facility of collective palms. Collectively, we will do onerous issues. I’m residing proof of that. My household’s entire and now, because of you, we’re lucky to get to spend the vacations collectively. Nevertheless, there stay too many households with family members wrongfully detained.”
Griner then requested her followers to help Whelan, who’s been in Russian captivity for 4 years over accusations of espionage. She included a mailing handle that his household has made out there.
“I hope you’ll be part of me in writing to Paul Whelan and persevering with to advocate for different People to be rescued and returned to their households,” she wrote of the previous Marine, who started a 16-year sentence in 2020.
Griner’s imprisonment and launch has renewed curiosity in Whelan’s case, which President Joe Biden has stated continues to be a high precedence regardless of the Kremlin’s refusal to barter over his launch. Russia’s allegations of spying, which Whelan maintains are false, have made him a extra essential prisoner to the federal government, whereas Griner was solely held for getting into the nation with vaporizer cartridges containing lower than 1 gram of hash oil.
However the variations between the 2 instances haven’t stopped Republicans from accusing the White Home of prioritizing Griner over Whelan and implying that Griner, who’s Black, was much less worthy of launch due to her protests in opposition to racism and police brutality.
Amongst them is former President Donald Trump, who dismissed the newly freed Griner as “a basketball participant who brazenly hates our Nation” and known as the prisoner swap an “unpatriotic embarrassment.” He additionally slammed the Biden administration for failing to safe Whelan’s launch, despite the fact that Trump was silent on the prisoner’s state of affairs all through a lot of his personal presidency.
Whelan and his household, nonetheless, have acknowledged why his case is extra difficult. In an announcement upon Griner’s launch, his household applauded Biden for making “the deal that was potential, somewhat than ready for one which wasn’t going to occur.”