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      Brittney Griner Was ‘Wrongfully Detained’, U.S. Government Says

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      More than two months after the W.N.B.A. star Brittney Griner was accused of having drugs in her luggage and taken into custody in Russia, the U.S. State Department on Tuesday said that it had determined she was “wrongfully detained.”“The U.S. government will continue to provide appropriate consular support to Ms. Griner and her family,” a State Department official said in a statement, adding that an interagency team would work to have her released.Griner, 31, has been held in Russia since February on drug charges that could carry a sentence of up to 10 years if she is convicted. Russian customs officials accused Griner of carrying vape cartridges with hashish oil in her luggage at an airport near Moscow as she returned to Russia to resume playing for UMMC Yekaterinburg, a professional women’s basketball team, after a two-week break.“Brittney has been detained for 75 days and our expectation is that the White House do whatever is necessary to bring her home,” Griner’s agent, Lindsay Kagawa Colas, said in a statement.The State Department did not explain why it was now designating Griner as wrongfully detained. ESPN first reported the change.A law passed by Congress in 2020 established 11 criteria for such a designation, any one of which can be a sufficient basis to secure the detainee’s release, including “credible information indicating innocence of the detained individual,” “credible reports that the detention is a pretext for an illegitimate purpose,” or a conclusion that U.S. “diplomatic engagement is likely necessary.”Under the law, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken must personally approve such a designation, and transfer responsibility for the case from the department’s consular affairs bureau to the office of the special envoy for hostage affairs.Some of Griner’s supporters and inner circle had been concerned about politicizing Griner’s case because of the frayed relationship between the United States and Russia and the tensions of the war in Ukraine. Most W.N.B.A. players and government officials have said little about the situation beyond expressing general support for Griner, as part of a strategy of quiet diplomacy.In other cases of wrongful detention, the United States had insisted that it would not link the fate of imprisoned individuals to larger policy issues. The State Department has repeatedly said, for instance, that Americans held in Iran are not part of the negotiations between Washington and Tehran to restore the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.In March, a Russian court extended Griner’s detention until at least May 19 and denied an appeal from Griner’s legal team in Russia, who had hoped to have her transferred to house arrest. That hearing did not deal with the merits of the case.Word of Griner’s new status comes less than a week after the United States conducted a prisoner swap with Moscow. Russia had for two years detained Trevor R. Reed, a former U.S. Marine, on what his family considered to be trumped-up charges of assault.Reed’s release renewed optimism that Griner would also be freed.“As I do everything in my power to get BG home, my heart is overflowing with joy for The Reed family,” Griner’s wife, Cherelle Griner, wrote on Instagram. “I do not personally know them, but I do know the pain of having your loved one detained in a foreign country. That level of pain is constant and can only be remedied by a safe return home.”Among publicly-known cases of Americans wrongfully held abroad, the average case has lasted more than four years, said Cynthia Loertscher, director of research at the nonprofit James W. Foley Legacy Foundation. The foundation is named after an American journalist kidnapped in Syria and executed by the Islamic State in 2014.The United States has designated as wrongfully detained Americans citizens and U.S. nationals who are currently imprisoned in China, Venezuela, Iran, Afghanistan, Belarus, Myanmar and Cuba, among several other nations. In an interview with “60 Minutes” that aired in February, Roger D. Carstens, the diplomat who will be overseeing the interagency effort to free Griner, said that over 40 Americans were wrongfully detained abroad.Many W.N.B.A. players join international teams to earn additional income during the league’s off-season. The top-tier players can make more than $1 million by playing in Russia. Griner, a two-time Olympic gold medalist and seven-time All-Star, is set to earn about $228,000 with the W.N.B.A.’s Phoenix Mercury in the 2022 season, according to the website Her Hoop Stats, just shy of the league’s maximum salary.The W.N.B.A.’s new season begins Friday. The league plans to “acknowledge the importance” of Griner by featuring her initials and jersey number, 42, on the sidelines of teams’ home courts.“There’s not a day that goes by where we’re not spending significant time on strategizing with, essentially, the administration experts,” W.N.B.A. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert told The New York Times in an interview last month.She added: “Everybody wants her to come home as quickly as possible. It’s a complex situation.” More

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      Brittney Griner’s Detention in Russia Is Cloaked in Silence

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      Those close to Griner have said little publicly since the W.N.B.A. star was detained in Russia on Feb. 17 on drug charges. Their approach has parallels with other efforts to release Americans held overseas.The detention of the W.N.B.A. star Brittney Griner in Russia on drug charges has left her supporters searching for a road map to a resolution in what could be an especially dangerous situation during the war in Ukraine.An exact parallel is hard to come by, but a situation nearly five years ago, in which three U.C.L.A. basketball players were accused of crimes while in China, blended sports, international diplomacy and a desire for secrecy in a way that echoes Griner’s situation as efforts to bring her home continue quietly.“It is an extremely sensitive situation,” said Representative Colin Allred, Democrat of Texas, who said he was working with the State Department to have Griner released. He added, “What we’re trying to do now, of course, is be helpful and not do anything that’ll place Brittney in any kind of danger or make her situation worse.”Griner’s attorney in Russia contacted the U.S. Embassy shortly after she was detained on Feb. 17, Allred said, after Russian Federal Customs Service officials said they had found vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage at an airport near Moscow. Allred said the Russian authorities have denied the State Department’s request that consular officials meet with Griner.“It’s already a violation of international norms and the way these things are handled when they happen to Americans abroad,” Allred said.Griner, 31, a center for the W.N.B.A.’s Phoenix Mercury, is said to be facing up to 10 years in prison if convicted of the drug charges. Many W.N.B.A. players supplement their salaries by playing internationally during the off-season. Griner has played for the Russian team UMMC Ekaterinburg since 2014. Those close to her, and officials from the W.N.B.A. and its players’ union, have said little about Griner’s situation beyond that they support her and hope to have her return home safely.The length of her detention so far is not unusual given the charges, said Tom Firestone, an attorney at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, who was the resident legal adviser to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow while working for the Justice Department. Russia’s customs service said in a statement on Saturday that it had opened a criminal case into the large-scale transportation of drugs.“Russia has not had liberalization in its cannabis laws the same way we have in the United States,” Firestone said.Russian prosecutors have two months to conduct a preliminary investigation and build a case, but can receive extensions beyond that, Firestone said. Getting out on bail is difficult for people charged with narcotics offenses, and will be especially so for Griner since she is not a Russian citizen, Firestone said.“They should get consular access certainly,” Firestone said. “When an American is arrested overseas the first source of assistance from the U.S. government is the consulate at the U.S. Embassy.”What role, if any, UMMC Ekaterinburg is playing in Griner’s case is unknown, but local ties can be crucial in situations like these, as they were for the three U.C.L.A. basketball players, LiAngelo Ball, Cody Riley and Jalen Hill, who were detained in China for shoplifting in November 2017 before a preseason game.From left, Cody Riley, LiAngelo Ball and Jalen Hill were accused of shoplifting while on a trip to China in 2017 with the U.C.L.A. men’s basketball team.Lucy Nicholson/Reuters“We were in Hangzhou, the headquarters of Alibaba, who was our host for the tournament, and they had a deep and nuanced appreciation for the local laws, customs,” said Larry Scott, who was then the commissioner of the Pac-12 Conference. He added, “And it was important to take guidance from them in addition to working with U.S. government officials and others.”Ball, Hill and Riley were in custody for less than a day before being released on bail. They returned to the United States about a week later and apologized publicly for the theft.Ball, who is the brother of the N.B.A. players Lonzo and LaMelo Ball, was the most well-known of the three U.C.L.A. players. “I’d like to start off by saying sorry for stealing from the stores in China,” LiAngelo Ball said at a news conference after returning to the United States. “I’m a young man, but it’s not an excuse for making a really stupid decision.”Scott also said the remorse shown by the players was instrumental in their being allowed to return swiftly. “They were apologetic for it and expressed that,” he said. “There’s an element of saving face involved for local authorities to understand foreigners coming in respect local laws and the local culture.”It is unclear whether Griner had drugs in her luggage, and American officials have repeatedly accused Russia of detaining U.S. citizens for specious reasons. But those close to Griner appear to be following one of the strategies employed by those surrounding Ball, Hill and Riley in 2017: creating as little public noise as possible.Russia-Ukraine War: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 4On the ground. More

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      How Roman Abramovich, a Russian Oligarch, Found Himself Under Sanctions

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      As Russian troops massed near the border with Ukraine last month, the American ambassador to Israel received an appeal on behalf of Roman Abramovich, the most visible of the billionaires linked to President Vladimir V. Putin.Leaders of cultural, educational and medical institutions, along with a chief rabbi, had sent a letter urging the United States not to impose sanctions on the Russian, a major donor, saying it would hurt Israel and the Jewish world. Days later, Mr. Abramovich and Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial, announced a partnership that a spokesman for the organization said included a pledge of at least $10 million.The request to the diplomat reflects the extraordinary effort Mr. Abramovich, 55, has made over the last two decades to parlay his Russian fortune into elite standing in the West — buying London’s Chelsea soccer team, acquiring luxury homes in New York, London, Tel Aviv, St. Barts and Aspen, collecting modern masterworks and contributing to arts institutions around the world. With two superyachts, multiple Ferrari, Porsche and Aston Martin sports cars, and a private 787 Boeing Dreamliner jet, Mr. Abramovich wanted everyone to know that he had arrived.But now the backlash against the Russian invasion of Ukraine is tarnishing the status that Mr. Abramovich and other oligarchs have spent so much to reach. On Thursday, British authorities added him to an ever-expanding list of Russians under sanctions for their close ties to Mr. Putin.Mr. Abramovich, whose fortune is estimated at more than $13 billion, was barred from entering Britain or doing any business there — disrupting his plans to sell his soccer team and prohibiting it from selling tickets to matches, even blocking him from paying to keep the electricity on in his West London mansion.Oligarchs like Mr. Abramovich “have used their ill-gotten gains to try to launder their reputations in the West,” said Thomas Graham, a Russia scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations. “But the message of these sanctions is, that is not going to protect you.”On Friday, Canada announced sanctions of its own against Mr. Abramovich. The United States has not imposed sanctions on the billionaire — so far, at least. In a statement explaining its actions, the British government said that the businessman had profited from transactions with the Russian government and special tax breaks. The statement also suggested that a steel company Mr. Abramovich controlled could contribute to the war against Ukraine, “potentially” supplying steel for Russian tanks. The business, Evraz, said in a statement that it had not done so. A representative for Mr. Abramovich did not respond to a request for comment.“The blood of the Ukrainian people is on their hands,” Liz Truss, the British foreign minister, said of the oligarchs under sanctions. “They should hang their heads in shame.”Mr. Abramovich on a trip in 1999 to Chukotka, a desolate province in northeastern Russia where he was elected governor.Victor Vasenin/Kommersant/Sipa USA, via Associated PressMichael McFaul, an American ambassador to Moscow during the Obama administration, recalled that while Mr. Putin’s government claimed to despise the United States and its allies, his foreign ministry was constantly trying to help the oligarchs around him, including Mr. Abramovich, obtain visas so that they could ingratiate themselves with the Western elite.“On our side, we have been playing right along,” he said, overlooking the oligarchs’ ties to Mr. Putin and welcoming them and their money.Orphaned as a child in a town on the Volga River in northern Russia, Mr. Abramovich dropped out of college and emerged from the Red Army in the late 1980s just as the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was opening new opportunities for private enterprise. Mr. Abramovich plunged into trading anything he could, including dolls, chocolates, cigarettes, rubber ducks and car tires.His big break came in the mid-1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when he and a partner persuaded the Russian government to sell them the state-run oil company Sibneft for about $200 million. In 2005, he sold his stake back to the government for $11.9 billion. Other deals followed, including the formation of a mammoth aluminum company. Many involved the Russian state, and some ended in bitter litigation.After Mr. Putin was inaugurated president in 2000, he quickly moved to dominate the billionaire businessmen who had profited from privatization, sending a message by jailing the richest and most powerful oligarch. Mr. Abramovich is one of the few early elite who remain in his circle.As Mr. Putin was consolidating power, Mr. Abramovich served as governor of a desolate northeastern province from 2001 until 2008.President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia with Mr. Abramovich in 2005.Reuters“I started business early, so maybe that’s why I’m bored with it,” he told The Wall Street Journal in 2001 about his interest in the region, saying he wanted to lead a “revolution toward civilized life.”But like other oligarchs wary of the new president’s power to make or break them, Mr. Abramovich also began looking for footholds outside Russia.Mr. Putin’s display of force “increased the incentive for the oligarchs to have acceptance in the West,” said Stephen Sestanovich, a professor of international relations at Columbia University and former ambassador at large to the former Soviet Union. “Who knows when you might fall out with Putin and need an alternative place to land?”In spring 2003, Mr. Abramovich was in Manchester, England, to watch the legendary Brazilian forward Ronaldo score a game-winning hat trick for Real Madrid. The Russian had never shown much interest in soccer before, but that night he was smitten.He soon began shopping for a team — looking in Spain and Italy before settling on England and finally on Chelsea. His $180 million takeover — completed in quick, stealthy talks with the British financier Keith Harris over a single weekend — transformed the club. In his first summer, he went on the largest single spending spree for players that English soccer had ever seen.Within two years of his arrival, Chelsea was the English champion for the first time in a half-century, and the team has since won four more championships. A Russian flag has hung outside the stadium for years, emblazoned with the words “The Roman Empire,” alongside a stylized image of its owner’s face. (Britain on Friday said it would consider proposals to buy the soccer team under special conditions.)Mr. Abramovich during a parade in London in 2005 after Chelsea became the English champion for the first time in a half-century.Odd Andersen/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAt a news conference when Russia won the right to host the 2018 soccer World Cup, Mr. Putin commended Mr. Abramovich for the development of Russian soccer, too, and suggested he might play a role in “a public-private partnership” to prepare for the tournament. “He has a lot of money in stocks,” Mr. Putin noted, smiling.While looking after his London soccer team, Mr. Abramovich met and married his third wife, Dasha Zhukova, the daughter of a Russian oil magnate, who had grown up partly in Los Angeles; studied Russian literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara; and tried fashion design in London.In 2011, he bought an elegant 15-bedroom mansion near Kensington Palace for a reported price over $140 million, which was expanded a few years later to include a huge underground swimming pool.Then he turned heads in Manhattan in 2014, paying $78 million for three adjacent townhouses on East 75th Street, in a landmark district of the Upper East Side. He proposed combining the three homes of different styles into a single mega-mansion, with an elevator, a new glass-and-bronze rear facade and a pool in the lower level. The Historic Districts Council, an advocacy group, called the plan “a whole new level of egregious consumption.” But he ultimately managed to win city approval, in part by purchasing a fourth adjacent townhouse for nearly $29 million and revising his alteration plans.Mr. Abramovich bought four adjacent townhouses on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and set about converting three of them into one mansion.Brendan Mcdermid/ReutersMs. Zhukova had developed a growing interest in art, and in 2008 she and Mr. Abramovich founded Garage, a seminal contemporary art center in Moscow. (Amy Winehouse performed at the opening, and early shows included works by Cindy Sherman and Jeff Koons.) He joined the board of the Bolshoi Theater. And Mr. Abramovich started to earn a reputation as one of the biggest spenders in the art world, known for buying pieces by blue-chip artists. He spent nearly $120 million at auctions in the same week, acquiring a Francis Bacon triptych and Lucian Freud’s “Benefits Supervisor Sleeping.”Russia-Ukraine War: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 4On the ground. More

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      What We Know About Brittney Griner’s Detention in Russia

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      The W.N.B.A. star was stopped at an airport outside Moscow and accused of carrying hashish oil in her luggage. But much about the case remains unclear.As tensions rose between Russia and the United States, Russian authorities detained Brittney Griner, a W.N.B.A. star, on drug charges. The Russian Federal Customs Service announced Ms. Griner’s detention on Saturday but said she was stopped at the Sheremetyevo airport near Moscow last month.The detention of Ms. Griner, 31, a seven-time W.N.B.A. All-Star center for the Phoenix Mercury and a key figure in two champion Olympic teams, comes during an inflamed standoff between Russia and the United States over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and pulls the player in the middle of the most acute crisis between the two countries since the Cold War.Here is what we know so far about Ms. Griner’s detention.Russia is talking about potentially serious charges.The Russian Federal Customs Service said that a sniffer dog had prompted it to search the carry-on luggage of an American basketball player at the Sheremetyevo airport near Moscow, and that it had found vape cartridges containing hashish oil. A state-owned Russian news agency then identified the player as Ms. Griner.Hashish oil is a marijuana concentrate that has a high concentration of the psychoactive chemical THC, and it is commonly sold in cartridges that are used in vape pens. The Russian Federal Customs Service said that customs officers had noticed vapes after scanning the traveler’s bag.The customs service said that a criminal case had been opened into the large-scale transportation of drugs, a charge that could carry a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.It released a video of a traveler who appeared to be Ms. Griner going through airport security with a trolley suitcase and a small backpack, followed by footage of someone examining a package that appeared to be from the traveler’s suitcase.“Brittney has always handled herself with the utmost professionalism during her long tenure with USA Basketball,” U.S.A. Basketball said on Twitter.The timing of the detention remains murky. Its political implications do, too.The screening at the airport occurred in February, according to the Customs Service, raising the possibility that Ms. Griner had been in custody for at least several days. She last posted on Instagram on Feb. 5. The timing provided leaves open the possibility that the case could have been underway in secret for weeks before Russian authorities chose to draw attention to it.It is still unclear whether Russia might have targeted Ms. Griner as leverage against the United States, which has led a widespread effort to impose harsh sanctions on Russia and its elite.Citing privacy constraints, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken did not comment on the detention on Sunday at a news conference in Chisinau, Moldova, and did not respond to a question about whether Russia had announced her arrest as retaliation for the economic, military and diplomatic pressure the United States has leveled against Russia in recent days.But American officials have repeatedly accused Russia of detaining U.S. citizens on doubtful pretexts.“This follows a pattern of Russia wrongly detaining & imprisoning US citizens,” Representative Joaquin Castro, Democrat of Texas, wrote on Twitter on Saturday, citing the case of Trevor Reed, a former U.S. Marine whom a Russian court sentenced to nine years in prison in 2020 on charges of violence against police officers that his family and supporters described as fraudulent.On Saturday, the State Department released an updated advisory urging American citizens to leave Russia immediately given the “potential for harassment against U.S. citizens by Russian government security officials.”Ms. Griner was in Russia to play. Many W.N.B.A. stars rely on income from overseas leagues.Ms. Griner has played for the Russian team UMMC Ekaterinburg for several years during the W.N.B.A. off-season.Many American players compete with high-paying Russian teams: about 70 W.N.B.A. players have decided to play with international teams instead of resting during the off-season this year, with more than a dozen in Russia and Ukraine.A W.N.B.A. spokeswoman said on Saturday that all the others had already left Russia and Ukraine.The financial incentives are compelling. W.N.B.A. players make a fraction of what their male counterparts do, with their maximum salary in 2022 at $228,094 while the top N.B.A. players are paid tens of millions of dollars.International female teams, which tend to have more government and corporate financial support than those in the W.N.B.A., can pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a season, and sometimes more than $1 million.Some observers criticized the gender pay gap in American basketball in connection to Ms. Griner’s detention.The public statements are cautious, but supporters are rallying around Ms. Griner.Mr. Blinken said the State Department would “provide every possible assistance” to any American held by a foreign government.“Whenever an American is detained anywhere in the world, we of course stand ready to provide every possible assistance,” Mr. Blinken said. “And that includes in Russia.”The W.N.B.A. said in a statement that Ms. Griner “has the W.N.B.A.’s full support and our main priority is her swift and safe return to the United States.”The Mercury also released a statement saying that they “love and support Brittney” and that their main concern was her safety, her physical and mental health and her safe return home.“Thank you to everyone who has reached out to me regarding my wife’s safe return from Russia,” Ms. Griner’s wife, Cherelle T. Griner, posted on Instagram on Saturday, adding, “We continue to work on getting my wife home safely.”Lara Jakes More

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      in Tennis

      Peng Shuai Said to Be in Videos From China's State Media

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      The editor of a state-run newspaper on Saturday shared clips said to be of the Chinese tennis star on Twitter. But they are unverified, and the head of the WTA called them “insufficient.”Nearly two weeks after people across the world began asking “Where is Peng Shuai?,” two questionable videos surfaced Saturday on social media of a person who appears to be the Chinese tennis star at a restaurant.The videos were shared on Twitter by the editor of a state-run newspaper, but the seemingly unnatural conversation in one video and the unclear location and dates of both raised questions about Peng’s safety and whether she was appearing in the videos of her own free will. A third video, said to be of Peng at a tennis match in Beijing, was posted about 10 hours later, on Sunday.Peng, in a social media post this month, accused a former top government official of sexually assaulting her. After the allegation, the Chinese government removed almost all references of Peng on social media within the country, and Peng disappeared from public life. Her absence prompted outrage across the world, especially from top officials and stars in tennis.Steve Simon, the chief executive of the WTA, the women’s professional tennis tour, has particularly been strident, demanding verifiable proof that Peng is safe and can move about society as she pleases and that officials fully investigate her allegations. If that does not occur, Simon said the WTA would stop playing tennis tournaments in China.On Saturday, after the videos surfaced, Simon continued to express frustration with the inability to independently verify Peng’s well-being and said that the organization’s “relationship with China is at a crossroads.”“While it is positive to see her, it remains unclear if she is free and able to make decisions and take actions on her own, without coercion or external interference,” he said. “This video alone is insufficient.”Peng, 35, is the only Chinese tennis player to have attained a world No. 1 ranking, in women’s doubles, and she was once heralded by the Chinese government as a model athlete.The video clips were posted on the Twitter account of Hu Xijin, the chief editor of The Global Times, an influential Communist Party newspaper, who described them as showing Peng having dinner with her coach and friends on Saturday.He wrote that he had “acquired” the clips but offered no explanation of how, and the clips appeared staged to establish the date. In the first clip, the man said to be Peng’s coach is discussing plans with her and asks, “Isn’t tomorrow Nov. 20?” A woman sitting next to Peng corrects him and says it will be Nov. 21. He then repeats the date twice.In the second clip, a woman wearing a mask, presumably Peng, is shown walking into a restaurant. The camera pauses on a sign indicating the date of the last cleaning, a common sight in Chinese buildings since the SARS epidemic. But only the month, November, is visible; the date appears to be obscured.Hu posted a third video hours later, describing it as the opening ceremony of a teen tennis match final in Beijing on Sunday to which Peng “showed up.”On Friday, a journalist for another Chinese media entity released pictures said to be of Peng in what appeared to be a bedroom, surrounded by stuffed animals. In those photos, Peng appeared younger than she did in more recent images of her and there was nothing to verify when they had been taken.Also on Friday, Simon wrote to China’s ambassador to the United States to reiterate his complaints and his threat to remove the nine tournaments the WTA holds in China, including the prestigious WTA Finals in Shenzhen. All of the tournaments in China this year were canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic. The WTA Finals were completed on Wednesday in Guadalajara, Mexico.If Peng is not able to speak freely, Simon wrote, “we have grave concerns that any of our players will be safe in China.”The men’s tennis tour has voiced its concern but has yet to threaten to pull its tournaments from China.The controversy surrounding Peng comes a little more than two months before the start of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, raising the specter of one of the world’s largest sporting events taking place in a country where a three-time Olympian tennis star is missing.The International Olympic Committee has said that it believes “quiet diplomacy” will provide the best chance for resolving the situation. On Friday, Dick Pound, an I.O.C. member, told Reuters that if the situation with Peng is “not resolved in a sensible way very soon, it may spin out of control.” He added: “Whether that escalates to a cessation of the Olympic Games, I doubt it. But you never know.”Simon has spent more than a week trying to establish personal contact with Peng through a series of phone numbers and other digital contacts but has not been able to speak with her.The videos on Saturday were the latest media released by a Chinese-controlled entity trying to establish Peng’s safety. Earlier this week, China’s state-owned broadcaster released a message supposedly from her.“Hello everyone this is Peng Shuai,” it read. It called the accusation of sexual assault, which was made just weeks ago, untrue. “I’m not missing, nor am I unsafe,” the message said. “I’ve been resting at home and everything is fine. Thank you again for caring about me.”Simon quickly denounced the release of the message.“I have a hard time believing that Peng Shuai actually wrote the email we received or believes what is being attributed to her,” he said.Peng has accused Zhang Gaoli, 75, a former vice premier of China, of sexually assaulting her at his home three years ago. In a post on her verified account on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, Peng wrote that the assault occurred after Zhang invited her to play tennis at his home. “I was so scared that afternoon,” she said. “I never gave consent, crying the entire time.”She also described having had an on-and-off consensual relationship with Zhang.Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said on Friday that the Biden administration was paying close attention to the situation and was “deeply concerned.” She called on the Chinese government to provide “independent, verifiable proof” of Peng’s whereabouts.In recent days, several notable names in tennis have joined the chorus of demanding proof that Peng is safe.“We need to see her in a live video holding up a newspaper from today or better yet, hitting balls,” Patrick McEnroe, the former player and ESPN commentator, said in an interview on Friday. McEnroe coached Peng earlier in her career in World Team Tennis.“If none of that happens, and people I talk to say if the Chinese really don’t care about what we think, and we never hear from Peng or have a clue, the only real recourse left is for professional tennis to pull all its tournaments from China,” he said.Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka, Simona Halep and Coco Gauff are among the current women’s players who have posted on social media about their concern for Peng. Novak Djokovic shared a statement from the Professional Tennis Players Association, of which he is a co-founder.Martina Navratilova, the former champion who defected from Czechoslovakia in 1975 to escape the communist government, is also speaking out about Peng.“I don’t believe a word they are saying,” Navratilova said of the Chinese government in an interview on Saturday. “There is a lot of subterfuge going on here.” More