In April 2019, yoga instructor Naama Issachar was arrested as she tried to board a connecting flight in Moscow on her way home to Israel. Russian authorities said they searched Issachar’s luggage and found about 10 grams of marijuana.
What elsewhere in the world might have drawn a slap on the wrist in Russia resulted in drug-trafficking charges and a seven-and-a-half-year prison sentence. Russia then reportedly dangled Issachar as a bargaining chip, offering to make a prisoner swap or to free the 26-year-old Israeli-American in exchange for other political favors.
Issachar’s story is a cautionary tale for Brittney Griner, the American basketball star arrested at the same Moscow airport last month under strikingly similar circumstances.