American WNBA superstar Brittney Griner contemplated suicide during the nine months he spent in a Russian prison and felt “less than a human being” for the conditions he endured, as revealed in an interview with his country’s television. Griner, detained at a Moscow airport on drug charges before being sentenced to nine years in prison, made the confession in a preview of a participation on the ABC channel, broadcast this Tuesday.
“Yes, I just didn’t think I could overcome what needed to be overcome.”said an emotional Griner when the interviewer of ABC’s 20/20 program asked her if he had considered “ending it all”.
In other segments of the interview, Griner, who was released in late 2022 as part of a prisoner swap, gave her take on the grim conditions she endured during her imprisonment in the Russian detention center.
“The mattress had a huge blood stain on it. There was no soap or toilet paper. That was the moment I felt less than a human being,” Griner said.
The basketball player reported that at a certain point during her imprisonment they made her go into a room with “a huge knife on the table.”
“And I thought, this is going to be a trip,” he said. “You have to do what you have to do to survive.”
Griner was detained while passing through airport security and charged with possessing vaping cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage.
The basketball player for the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury said she accidentally put the cartridges in her luggage.
“My life has ended right here,” was the basketball player’s thought when she realized her mistake, as she confessed during the interview.
In another part of the interview, Griner recalled the moment in which he was informed of his nine-year prison sentence.
“I was very scared by everything,” in the face of a world that I totally didn’t know, she confessed.
A double Olympic gold medalist, WNBA champion and a figure in the LGBTQ+ community, Griner was released in December 2022 as part of a deal in which she was traded for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, known as the ” “Merchant of Death.”
Griner’s full interview, which precedes a memoir by the player due out next month, will air in its entirety on May 1.
2024-04-24 00:57:00
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