Jailed WNBA star Brittney Griner sends message to supporters on 32nd birthday

WNBA star Brittney Griner marked her 32nd birthday — and eighth month in Russian custody — by sending a message to her supporters.

“Thank you everyone for fighting so hard to get me home,” the Phoenix Mercury center said in a statement through her lawyer Maria Blagovolina. “All the support and love are definitely helping me.”

Griner was arrested at Sheremetyevo Airport near Moscow in February 2022 with cannabis oil vape pens in her luggage. She was fined 1 million rubles and sentenced to a penal colony in August 2022 on on drug smuggling charges after pleading guilty at her trial. She said at the time she made an “honest mistake” and didn’t mean to break the law.

FILE - WNBA star and two-time Olympic gold medalist Brittney Griner is escorted from a courtroom after a hearing in Khimki just outside Moscow, Russia, on Aug. 4, 2022. (Alexander Zemlianichenko/)

Griner plays in a Russian basketball league during the WNBA off-season.

Earlier this month, Cherelle Griner, Brittney’s wife, told “CBS Morning’s” Gayle King how “terrified” she was.

“As much as everybody’s telling me a different definition of what BG is, it feels to me as if she’s a hostage,” Cherelle said. “It terrifies me because when you watch movies, sometimes those situations don’t end well. Sometimes they never get the person back.

“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?’ The fact that everything’s so unprecedented and everything is changeable. I feel like every day, I’m hearing something new and so it’s just kind of like, it’s terrifying.”

Griner’s appeal of her nine-year sentence is scheduled to be heard next Tuesday.

According to multiple reports, the Biden administration has discussed with Russia how to secure the release of Griner and Paul Whelan, a former Marine accused of espionage. The administration in June offered a prisoner swap of Griner for convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout, who is serving a 25-year sentence in the U.S.

Last week, former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, who is negotiating for Griner and Whelan’s release as a private citizen, said he was “cautiously optimistic” about the pair being released by the end of the year.