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The detention facility simply outdoors Moscow the place Brittney Griner, the American basketball star,has been held is a former orphanage rebuilt a decade in the past to accommodate ladies jailed earlier than trial and, individually, ladies serving their jail sentences.
Its artificially lit, grey painted halls and grim tall partitions befit its bureaucratic title: Correctional Colony No. 1, or IK-1.
1000’s of Russian ladies have handed by way of it, together with at the least one different well-known foreigner: Naama Issachar, the Israeli-American arrested in April 2019 when the Russian police stated they’d discovered a 3rd of an oz. of marijuana in her baggage as she was connecting at a Moscow airport.
Ms. Issachar was sentenced to seven and a half years in jail on drug possession and smuggling prices earlier than President Vladimir V. Putin pardoned her, 10 months after she was first arrested, as she turned a political pawn within the advanced relationship between Russia and Israel.
In jail, Ms. Issachar advised her mom: “The clouds in Moscow are fairly.”
It was all she may see of the surface world.
Now it’s Ms. Griner, additionally held on drug prices, who’s a pawn — American officers name her a hostage of the Kremlin — however the geopolitics at stake, amid the struggle in Ukraine and Mr. Putin’s showdown with the West, are way more fraught.
In a phone interview from Israel, Ms. Issachar’s mom, Yaffa Issachar, stated that her daughter had cried when she heard about Ms. Griner’s case, telling her: “I do know what she’s going by way of now.”
The mom stated that Ms. Issachar had been handled comparatively properly by her cellmates, however that she feared that Ms. Griner, as a homosexual lady, may very well be handled worse due to Russia’s conservative attitudes and restrictive legal guidelines surrounding homosexuality.
Yaffa Issachar stated her daughter had been moved by way of three Russian detention services, together with three months within the one the place Ms. Griner is predicted to remain by way of the length of her trial, which began on Friday. It’s within the village of Novoye Grishino, a 50-mile drive from central Moscow.
Ms. Griner is being held within the pretrial detention heart of the ability, which additionally features a bigger penal colony for girls serving out their sentences, with its personal stitching manufacturing unit and Russian Orthodox church.
Video footage of the jail out there on-line reveals tall, grey partitions, previous jail bars and a rusty monument to Lenin within the courtyard. Ms. Issachar, who was allowed to go to her daughter twice a month, additionally remembers the Lenin monument — together with the din of barking jail canine that, she stated, had been being educated within the yard.
For Ms. Griner, each day within the facility seems just about the identical, stated Yekaterina Kalugina, a journalist and member of a public jail monitoring group who has visited Ms. Griner within the jail.
What to Know About Brittney Griner’s Detention in Russia
The inmates get up, have breakfast of their cell — often some primary meals — after which go for a stroll within the jail’s courtyard, which is roofed by a internet. The remainder of the day is stuffed with studying books — Ms. Griner has been studying Dostoyevsky in translation, as an example — and watching tv, although the entire channels are in Russian, Ms. Kalugina stated.
The cell has a separate personal washroom, she stated, one thing of a novelty for Russian prisons. Inmates can order meals on-line and use a fridge within the cell for groceries. They’re allowed to take a bathe solely twice per week.
Ms. Issachar stated it could take so long as 4 hours to finish the paperwork to enter the jail, with the entire meals she was bringing in painstakingly inspected — all the way down to the tea luggage, which needed to be reduce open, their contents emptied right into a plastic bag.
She may see her daughter solely by way of glass, and discuss to her solely by way of a phone. She stated that her daughter had been allowed weekly visits by a rabbi, who would go letters between them; below jail laws, the rabbi was allowed to be in the identical room because the inmate.
The isolation for her daughter was extreme, Ms. Ishaffar stated. “Mommy, the autumn began,” she recalled her daughter telling her at one level. “I see the leaves coming down.”
Ms. Ishaffar steered that Ms. Griner’s household discover a priest who may go to her.
“There’s any individual watching them,” she stated, “however at the least it’s a human she will discuss to.”
Isabel Kershner contributed reporting.
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