US basketball player Brittney Griner is seen on a screen via a video link from a remand prison during a court hearing to consider an appeal against her sentence, at the Moscow regional court on October 25, 2022. southeast of Moscow.
"In Russia, Mordovia is known as ‘the land of prisoners.’ Its colonies descend directly from the Stalin-era camps, and have a reputation for being particularly strict," said Zoya Svetova, a Russian journalist and human rights defender who previously worked with the Public Monitoring Commission, a state-backed prison watchdog.
But Svetova said IK-2 holds mostly women convicted of murder and assault, as well as a rising number of those incarcerated for drug crimes. She told The Associated Press in an interview that she and her colleagues received multiple reports of women being brutalized by their fellow inmates, "cruel" wardens and inadequate medical facilities.
She alleged that inmates at the IK-14 colony were "collapsing under the strain of slavery-like conditions," forced to work up to 17 hours a day and succumbing to hunger and frostbites. While Blinken didn’t elaborate, the AP and other news organizations have reported that the Biden administration has offered to exchange Griner and Whelan for Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer serving a 25-year sentence in the U.S. Bout once earned the nickname "the merchant of death."
She can rott !!