‘I wanted to take my life’: Brittney Griner talks about detention in Russian prison
- Basketball star was detained on drug charges in 2022
- Griner details ordeal during interview with ABC
Brittney Griner, the US basketball star who was imprisoned in Russia for 10 months in 2022, has given her first interviews since her release as part of a prisoner exchange, revealing that she had contemplated suicide while in jail.
Speaking to the New York Times, Griner described her arrest, the shocking and unsanitary conditions that she endured during her detention, and her difficult readjustment to ordinary life after she was exchanged for the convicted weapons smuggler Viktor Bout in December 2022. “I’ve never been so dirty in my life,” she said.
She added that Joe Biden had told her wife, Cherelle, not to pressure him in public during negotiations because it “would play into Russia’s hands”. The interview came just days before the release of Griner’s prison memoir, Coming Home.
