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Brittney Griner, the WNBA star whose 2022 arrest in Moscow sparked international condemnation, says she was holding it together until she saw her wife Cherelle’s face.
Griner, 33, was taken into custody after cannabis oil cartridges were found in her luggage in February 2022 at a Moscow-area airport, and later sentenced to nine years in Russian prison. At that point, she was allowed a video chat with her wife.
”I was holding it together until I saw her face,” Ms Griner told ABC’s 20/20 in an interview that aired on Wednesday night. “I just broke.”
It was the culmination of half a year’s worth of anxiety and doubt, a fear that began when officials seized Ms Griner’s passport at the airport.
The WNBA star knew she was in serious trouble, and frantically tried to send text messages to Cherelle, who was asleep at the time.
“If you don’t hear from me for like one hour or more get my agent on the phone. Wake up plz,” one message read.
“Baby text me plz. I’m freaking out,” read another.
One of the last messages was the most jarring: “This is it for me.”
“Honestly it was probably the most alarming thing I’ve ever experienced in my life,” Cherelle Griner told 20/20. “It was panic in the messages and there were so many of them.”
The alarm would not abate once Ms Griner’s sentence was known. In November, she was transferred to a penal colony, and her location was initially unknown.
As the WNBA star headed to serve out her sentence, she feared for what was in store.
“I was just so scared for everything,” she told host Robin Roberts through tears. “There was so much unknown.”
Conditions during her time in Russian prison were harrowing.
In pretrial detention, Ms Griner said she was given toothpaste that expired 15 years ago and forced to live in a cell with black mould and a bloody mattress.
In the frigid penal colony where she was later moved, Ms Griner worked around the clock helping manufacture Russian military uniforms and had to cut her dreadlocks because they would ice over.
“My dreads started to freeze,” she said. “They would just stay wet and cold and I was getting sick. You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do to survive.”
During the interview, Ms Griner also reflected on the “mental lapse” of travelling with the cannabis vape pen that led to her 10-month Russian imprisonment, a punishment that ended when she was returned to the US in December 2022 in a prisoner exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.
“I could just visualise everything I worked so hard for just crumbling and going away”, the WNBA player said.
She said that the whole experience was made more difficult because of her inability to communicate with the prison officers.
In July, she pleaded guilty to drug charges, testifying that the cartridges were in her luggage accidentally and that she had “no intention” of breaking Russian law, under which cannabis is illegal.
Anchor Robin Roberts asked Griner how she managed to bring the cartridges with her by mistake.
“Have you ever forgot your keys in your car?” Griner said. “Left your car running? Have you ever, you know, where’s my glasses? They’re on top of your head. Where’s my phone? Oh, it’s in my pocket. It’s just so easy to have a mental lapse.
“Granted, my mental lapse was on a more grand scale. But it doesn’t take away from how that can happen”.
She continued: “This was a mistake. It was an accident, which I understand accidents have repercussions”, Griner said. “And I’m American in Russia where relations aren’t the best”.
Roberts asked Griner to explain what was going through her mind when she realised what she’d done.
“I’m thinking about my wife. I’m thinking about my dad. You know, what my mom’s going to think, what my family’s going to think, public opinion is going to think”, she said. “I can just see the headlines now”.
The Department of State classified Griner’s case as “unlawfully detained” in May 2022. It is the same designation given to former US marine Paul Whelan and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich who are still being held in Russia.
Since returning to the US, Griner has continued to play basketball and is expecting her first baby with wife Cherelle Griner in July.
The basketball star will reveal more about her time in Russian jail in a memoir titled, Coming Home. The book is scheduled to be released on 7 May.
Source: independent.co.uk
