Brittney Griner shared details about her 10-month imprisonment in Russia in a preview from her first sit-down interview with ABC's '20/20,' out May 1.
Brittney Griner #42 of Team Stewart listens during a WNBA All-Star Game media availability on July 14, 2023 in Las Vegas, Nevadaof the ten months that preceded that return to comfort, during which the now-33-year-old was imprisoned in Russia, hasn’t been easy to shake.
The athlete was arrested, claiming she packed the cartridges by mistake. She later pleaded guilty to drug smuggling charges and was in December 2022. But in the time before that, she faced inhumane conditions and experienced suicidal ideations while detained at the Female Penal Colony IK-2 in Yavas, one of the harshest types of Russian penal colonies for women.
“It was a huge knife sitting on the table and I was just like, now this is going to be a ride. You got to do what you got to do to survive,” she explained. “The mattress had a huge blood stain on it. I had no soap, no toilet paper. That was the moment where I just felt less than a human.
There were times, Griner shared in the emotional clip, when “I didn’t think I could get through what I needed to get through.” Especially in the earliest months of her imprisonment, she continued, “I was just so scared for everything ’cause it just so much unknown.
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