For Griner, it meant the WNBA star would return home after being held nearly 10 months in Russia on drug charges. Justice Department as one of the most prolific arms dealers in the world, the swap ended 14 years in custody. 8, 2022 - Bout and Griner met on an airport tarmac in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, each escorted by officials from the other's country. He respected how the guards and marshals did their jobs, he says, describing them as "professional and kind." He says they wished each other well. marshals.Ī supervisor arrived with a jacket and clothes that were more appropriate for his life outside prison, something Bout says he was grateful for, knowing she must have been awakened by a call in the middle of the night. The guards returned and escorted him to the receive and dispatch office, where he waited a couple of hours for the U.S. He packed, threw the rest of his gray and beige prison clothes into plastic bags to donate to other inmates, and waited. You learn to handle the horses in your head." "That's maybe the skill that helped me get through all this s. "It's a Zen moment when you need to be present right here and right now," Bout told ESPN. Even as he dressed that morning in a prison-drab T-shirt, jeans and the New Balance sneakers he bought at the prison commissary, he never forgot that. While he packed, some 5,200 miles away, American basketball player Brittney Griner already had been moved out of a Russian women's prison.įor months, the two had known their best chance at freedom would be an exchange for the other, if their countries could navigate the hostile geopolitical thicket to make such a deal.īut Bout knew he wasn't free until he walked away from the people who had complete control over his life and back into the hands of his own. It wouldn't take that long to box up the few family photos, four or five books, and the drawings he had made. The guards told him they would be back in 20 minutes. But now three guards stood outside his cell with empty cardboard boxes. Normally, the day inside the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, started an hour later, when a single guard came for the 5 a.m. 7, 2022, Viktor Bout heard the sounds of multiple footsteps bouncing off concrete walls, a sharp break from the clockwork prison routines. Inside Brittney Griner's Russia arrest, detainment and releaseĮarly on the morning of Dec. You have reached a degraded version of because you're using an unsupported version of Internet Explorer.įor a complete experience, please upgrade or use a supported browser
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