World

Brittney Griner’s release from a prison ordeal in Russia sparked an outpouring of joy — but also raised tough questions for Joe Biden: was the US president right to trade a notorious arms dealer for the basketball star jailed on minor drug charges?

The rival Republican Party quickly attacked Biden whose spokeswoman said he made no apologies for freeing Griner, a 32-year-old Olympic gold medalist and LGBTQ trailblazer who was locked up after being found with small quantities of cannabis oil in vape cartridges.

Bout, the inspiration for the movie “Lord of War” who was accused of arming rebels in some of the world’s bloodiest conflicts, was handed 25 years in prison in 2012.

Judge Shira A. Scheindlin, who sentenced him in a federal court in New York, said there was no equivalence between the two cases but welcomed the exchange for Griner.

“I think Viktor Bout has served sufficient time, frankly, for the crimes of which he was convicted,” Scheindlin, now in private practice, told AFP.

She said she was required to hand down a minimum sentence she considered excessive because Bout was convicted on terrorism charges.

Bout was detained in Thailand in 2008 in a US sting for allegedly trying to sell arms to Colombia’s FARC rebels — an operation Scheindlin described as Bout having been “roped in.”

“He himself wasn’t a terrorist. He was a businessman arms dealer. And there are arms dealers in every country including the United States of America.”

– ‘One or none’ –

But Scheindlin said she wished Bout were freed not only for Griner but for Paul Whelan, a former Marine detained in 2018 on espionage accusations.

Although both Whelan and the US government deny the spying allegations, Scheindlin argued that trading him for Bout would have made “a little more sense” given the severity of the charges he faces.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who raised the prisoner swap in rare direct contact with his Russian counterpart in the midst of the Ukraine war, said that Russia treated the two cases differently as it saw Whelan “through the lens of sham espionage charges.”

“This was not a choice about which American to bring home. The choice was, in this instance, one or none,” Blinken told reporters.

Will Pomeranz, the director of the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, said Russia would see a victory in freeing Bout.

“It demonstrates that the Russian state always has the back of their security services and that they will leave no one behind, even as it means long and protracted negotiation,” he said.

He said that while Griner’s arrest was consistent with Russia’s strict drug laws, President Vladimir Putin “clearly had leverage” after Biden publicly put a priority on freeing Griner, whose plight has drawn wide interest in the United States.

Pomeranz expected a difficult task ahead to free Whelan.

“Paul Whelan’s best chance to get out of Russia was being part of the Brittney Griner swap,” he said.

– Incentive to adversaries? –

Republican Senator Marco Rubio, while welcoming Griner’s release, said the deal showed Putin “how detaining high-profile Americans on relatively minor charges can both distract American officials and cause them to release truly bad individuals who belong behind bars.”

Republican Representative Nicole Malliotakis, pointing to Bout’s record, said Biden should have secured the release of both Whelan and Griner, writing on Twitter, “A US Marine is left behind in another bad deal made by Biden.”

But the United States has repeatedly shown a willingness to carry out deals criticized as disproportionate to free citizens in response to public opinion.

Other democracies have made similar decisions: in one of the most striking examples, Israel in 2011 freed more than 1,000 prisoners in exchange for the release of a single soldier, Gilad Shalit, by the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

The United States has set a government policy of not paying ransoms for its citizens, hoping to avoid incentives for hostage-taking.

In a possible sign of the public mood, an American football player, Micah Parsons, voiced anger on Twitter that the United States “left a Marine” but backtracked and apologized after a deluge of criticism and said he was “extremely happy” for Griner.

Paul Rieckhoff, a veterans advocate and commentator, said that Whelan should be released “full stop” but said Griner was “at unique risk in Russian prison” as a Black and LGBTQ woman.

“When she gets home, I have no doubt she’ll be out in front leading the fight for the release of Paul Whelan. And we should all join her.”

The US Congress on Thursday passed landmark legislation to protect same-sex marriage under federal law, and President Joe Biden has vowed to quickly sign the measure.

The vote in the House of Representatives saw 39 Republicans join a united Democratic majority in a rare show of bipartisanship, provoking loud cheers on the floor less than 10 days after the Senate passed the same bill.

“Today, Congress took a critical step to ensure that Americans have the right to marry the person they love,” Biden said in a statement.

He said the bipartisan vote would “give peace of mind to millions of LGBTQI+ and interracial couples who are now guaranteed the rights and protections to which they and their children are entitled.”

The conservative-led Supreme Court in June overturned longstanding abortion rights, prompting lawmakers of both parties to move to prevent the court from taking away same-sex marriage rights, as some feared it might do.

The House had earlier approved legislation similar to the Senate’s, but needed Thursday’s vote to reconcile minor differences.

Biden has dubbed marriage equality one of his legislative priorities and has said he will “promptly and proudly” sign the bill into law.

Democrats and others saluted the historic vote.

“I began my career fighting for LGBTQ communities,” outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tweeted on Thursday, “and now, one of the final bills that I will sign as Speaker will ensure the federal government never again stands in the way of marrying the person you love.”

The new legislation, known as the Respect for Marriage Act, does not require states to legalize same-sex marriage but does require them to recognize a marriage so long as it was valid in the state where it was performed.

– ‘Wrong way to go’ –

It repeals previous legislation defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, and also protects interracial couples by requiring states to recognize legal marriages without regard to “sex, race, ethnicity or national origin.” 

Public acceptance of same-sex marriage has grown dramatically in recent decades, with polls now showing a strong majority of Americans supporting it.

But some conservatives and the religious right remain opposed.

“I think this is the wrong way to go,” conservative Republican Jim Jordan said shortly before the vote.

House Democrats had worked with urgency to get the bill passed while they still control Congress. Republicans won a narrow majority in the chamber in midterm elections in November and will take control there in January, while Democrats retain narrow control of the Senate.

The Supreme Court in a 2015 decision legalized same-sex marriages. Hundreds of thousands of couples have married since then.

Canada’s federal police on Thursday suspended a contract with a Beijing-linked firm to supply and maintain police radio equipment — following a political backlash, the public safety minister’s office said.

The half-million dollar contract for a radio frequency filtering system to prevent eavesdropping had gone to Canada’s Sinclair Technologies, which is controlled by China’s Hytera Communications.

Concerns were raised about potential Chinese access to Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) communications since the Shenzhen-based company — which has been blacklisted by the United States — is partly owned by the Chinese government.

“The RCMP has suspended the contract,” a spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino told AFP.

When asked about it this week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the deal was “disconcerting,” given his security agencies’ warnings about Chinese espionage and interference in Canadian affairs.

Opposition Tory leader Pierre Poilievre said Wednesday it was an “astonishing” gaffe. 

“I mean, it’s almost something that you’d expect to be out of a spy novel, but characters in spy novels would never be that incompetent,” he commented.

The US Federal Communications Commission banned Hytera in 2021, saying it was among several Chinese firms that pose a national security risk. Huawei is on the same US list, and has been banned by Canada too.

Hytera also faces accusations — which it denies — of conspiring to steal trade secrets from American telecommunications company Motorola Solutions.

A key former Hytera director has pleaded guilty to participating in the conspiracy, according to filings released December 7.

Finland and Sweden joined the United States on Thursday in asking Turkey for its greenlight soon to join NATO, saying they have been fulfilling promises sought by Ankara on militants.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the Swedish and Finnish foreign ministers, meeting jointly in Washington, steered clear of airing any frustration or threatening Turkey, the one nation holding up the Nordic nations’ bids to join the transatlantic alliance.

“I’m confident that NATO will formally welcome Finland and Sweden as members soon,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a joint news conference.

“Both countries have taken significant concrete actions to fulfill their commitments, including those related to the security concerns on the part of our ally Turkey,” Blinken said.

Turkey has demanded that the two countries take tougher stances on Kurdish militants that it considers terrorists in exchange for backing their NATO bids.

Sweden last week extradited Mahmut Tat, who is wanted by Ankara for membership in the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said that commitments made earlier this year to Turkey by both countries were being “very much fulfilled.”

He voiced hope that Sweden and Finland would join by February, the date when the other initial holdout, Hungary, has pledged to approve their accession.

“Of course what we are still missing is a clear date and clear plan of the Turkish parliament to deal with this issue,” Haavisto said.

“We know that Turkey is going to elections. Of course our hope is that this decision should come from Turkey rather sooner than later,” he said.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is up for reelection in June and some experts have speculated that he will show an uncompromising attitude until then.

Sweden and Finland both have close ties with Western militaries but have historically stopped short of open alliances for fear of angering nearby Russia.

Their hesitation changed after Russia invaded Ukraine, which had unsuccessfuly sought for years to join NATO, which commits to mutual defense of all its members.

Prince Harry slammed the media “feeding frenzy” over his relationship with Meghan in an explosive Netflix docuseries aired Thursday and criticised Britain’s royal family for failing to protect her and his mother Diana.

The family has been braced for the first three episodes of the six-part series “Meghan & Harry”.

It was largely spared during the first episodes but was still on the end of accusations of “unconscious” racial bias and that it did not help Meghan or Diana after her 1992 separation from Harry’s father Charles, who is now king.

“To see another woman in my life who I love go through this feeding frenzy, that’s hard,” said Harry. “It is basically the hunter versus the prey.”

“The moment that she divorced, the moment she left the institution, then she was by herself… she was completely exposed to this,” Harry, 38, said of his mother, who died in a Paris car crash in 1997.

Meghan also took aim at the family for failing to counter negative press reports about her, saying “it was horrible, but I continued to hold the line, like say nothing”.

Her husband said the family ignored racist undertones in the reports.

“As far as a lot of the family were concerned, everything that she was being put through, they’d been put through as well. So it was almost like a rite of passage,” he said.

“I said the difference here is the race element.”

Harry went on to claim there was a “huge level of unconscious bias” within the family, with the documentary referencing a racist brooch worn by Princess Michael of Kent to an event that Meghan attended in 2017.

Harry reiterated feeling “ashamed” about being photographed wearing a Nazi uniform to a fancy-dress party in 2005, calling it “probably one of the biggest mistakes of my life”.

– ‘War’ –

The documentary is lifting the lid on events that prompted the pair to quit royal life and move to the United States in 2020.

Several British newspapers said the couple had declared “war” on the royal family, which said Thursday that no family members had been approached to comment for the docuseries.

The first parts trace the couple’s budding love story and their attempts to keep it a secret.

“When I got to meet ‘M’ I was terrified of her being driven away by the media, the same media that had driven so many other people away from me,” said Harry.

“I knew that the only way that this could possibly work is by keeping it quiet for as long as possible.”

The early episodes also focus on Harry’s childhood and difficult teen years, often with paparazzi in tow.

He describes how he found refuge in frequent trips to Africa, and in an apparent barb at his blood family, said: “I have a second family out there, a group of friends that literally brought me up.”

In another seeming dig at his older brother Prince William and wife Catherine, he said: “with many people in the family, especially the men, there can be a temptation or an urge to marry someone who would fit in the mould.”

The final three parts are due to be released on December 15. 

Royal fans outside Buckingham Palace were divided on the need for Harry and Meghan to make the series.

“It’s just not the right thing to do. He (Harry) was so close to his brother at one time and now he’s alienated himself from his family,” said Mary Rose, 68, from Worksop in north east England.

But Fflur Jones, a 26-year-old nurse from Wales, said: “I think they’re really brave for what they’ve done.”

“Speaking out, especially against family, is really difficult. So fair play to them for doing that.”

– Racism claims –

Netflix showcased the first trailer last week just as William made his first trip to the United States as heir to the throne, prompting accusations of sabotage.

The timing could barely have been worse for William after Buckingham Palace sacked one of his godmothers as a courtier for using racially charged language to a black British woman at a reception.

For some, the incident reinforced incendiary claims by mixed-race Meghan, 41, that racism within the royal household was one of the reasons for leaving.

The docuseries airs three months exactly since the death of Harry’s grandmother Queen Elizabeth II, and a month before the long-awaited publication of his memoirs, “Spare”.