*Brittney Griner has pleaded guilty to drug charges in a Russian court.
“I was in a rush packing and the cartridges accidentally ended up in my bag,” Griner told the court in Khimki, BBC reports.
Griner has been detained in Russia since February on accusations of smuggling cannabis oil, which is illegal in the country. She has officially been classified as “wrongfully detained,” a US State Department official told CNN in May.
“The Department of State has determined that the Russian Federation has wrongfully detained U.S. citizen Brittney Griner,” a State Department spokesperson said in a statement obtained by PEOPLE.
READ MORE: Finally! Biden and Harris Speak with Brittney Griner’s Wife | VIDEO
The U.S. professional basketball champion faces five to 10 years in prison if convicted.
Her arrest at Sheremetyevo airport came a week before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Griner has sent President Biden a letter saying she was “terrified [she] might be here forever”.
Per the BBC report, Russian government officials have warned the US not to “make noise in public” about the high-profile case.
“The hype and working on the public, with all the love for this genre among modern politicians, currently only disturbs” the court process, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said.
“I’d like to plead guilty, your honor. But there was no intent. I didn’t want to break the law,” Griner told the court this week.
Her trial recently got underway but has been adjourned for a week.
Griner’s wife, Cherelle Griner, recently said that she has ‘zero’ trust in the U.S. government after a botched phone call on their fourth wedding anniversary.
We reported previously, per CNN, that Cherelle told The Associated Press that Brittney attempted to call her 11 times on their anniversary date last month but nobody at the US Embassy in Moscow was there to connect the call.
Cherelle said she was “very pissed” about the error and that the call had been scheduled for weeks. She also said she had learned that the number her wife had been given to call usually processes calls only on weekdays, which is likely why the multiple calls had gone unanswered.
“I find it unacceptable, and I have zero trust in our government right now,” Cherelle told AP, as reported by People. “If I can’t trust you to catch a Saturday call outside of business hours, how can I trust you to actually be negotiating on my wife’s behalf to come home? Because that’s a much bigger ask than to catch a Saturday call.”
In a statement to AP, a State Department representative said, “We deeply regret that Brittney Griner was unable to speak with her wife because of a logistical error.”
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