Brittney Griner ‘On Her Way’ to Russian Penal Colony, Attorneys Say

The U.S. women’s basketball star was sentenced to nine years in a Russian prison for carrying cannabis oil into the country in February

Brittney Griner is being transferred to a penal colony in Russia where she is set to begin her nine-year sentence for carrying cannabis oil into the country.

The U.S. women’s basketball star, 32, was sentenced last month after being arrested in February at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport on “drug smuggling charges”. President Biden had been trying to negotiate a deal to get Griner back on U.S. soil, saying she had been “wrongfully detained,” but was denied, though the White House has continued to pursue efforts.

Griner “is now on her way to a penal colony,” Griner’s attorneys Maria Blagovolina and Alexander Boykov told CNN Wednesday. “We do not have any information on her exact current location or her final destination.”

“In accordance with the standard Russian procedure, the attorneys, as well as the U.S. Embassy, should be notified upon her arrival at her destination. Notification is given via official mail and normally takes up to two weeks to be received.”

In a statement to PEOPLE following Griner’s initial sentencing in August, her attorneys voiced that the verdict was “absolutely unreasonable” and said they will “certainly file an appeal.”

However, after the appeal was rejected in October, Griner’s lawyers told PEOPLE that she is “a very strong person” and “has a champion’s character.”

“She of course has her highs and lows as she is severely stressed being separated from her loved ones for over eight months,” they said.

The WNBA center’s wife Cherelle Griner told CBS’ Gayle King that the events have been playing out “like a movie” to her.

“I’m like, in no world did I ever thought, you know, our president and a foreign nation’s president would be sitting down having to discuss the freedom of my wife,” Cherelle expressed to King in an interview last month. “And so to me, as much as everybody’s telling me a different definition of what BG is, it feels to me as if she’s a hostage.”

“It terrifies me, because when you watch movies, sometimes those situations don’t end well,” Cherelle added. “Sometimes they never get their person back.”