By Mark Grey
12:03pm PDT, Might 2, 2024
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WNBA star Brittney Griner had some darkish ideas in 2022 after she was arrested on drug-related costs and later sentenced to 9 years in a Russian jail. Nevertheless, she kept away from self hurt as a result of she did not belief Russian authorities to launch her physique. “I felt like leaving right here so badly,” the basketball star instructed ABC Information in Might 2024. As an inmate, Brittney stated, she felt “lower than human.”
Along with sharing her innermost ideas, the Phoenix Mercury participant and two-time Olympian additionally painted a horrifying image of what life was like in jail camps in Moscow and within the city of Yavas.
Preserve clicking for extra info on her jail expertise, and to learn the textual content message she despatched her spouse instantly after being detained in a Moscow airport…
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After being stopped by customs brokers at a Moscow airport in February 2022 for having a hashish oil cartridge in her baggage, Brittney Griner texted her spouse the next messages:
“Hey child I bought stopped by safety at customs”
“If you happen to do not hear from me for like one hour or extra get my agent on the telephone”
“Get up plz”
“Child textual content me plz I am freaking out”
“Child”
“Yo”
“Child”
“Hi there”
“That is it for me”
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As she was being arrested on the Moscow airport in February 2022, Brittney Griner rapidly realized that issues had been unhealthy.
She instructed ABC Information in Might 2024, “My complete coronary heart simply fell out of my physique. Simply this overpowering feeling of like an elevator dropped from beneath my ft. I am identical to, my life is over proper right here. Within the midst of them going by way of my baggage, there’s two cartridges. And I am identical to, ‘Oh, my God, how did I make this error?’ … I might simply visualize the whole lot I labored so laborious for simply crumbling and going away.”
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Whereas locked up in Russia, Brittney Griner was compelled to write down a letter to the nation’s President Vladimir Putin.
“They made me write this letter. It was in Russian,” she stated. “I needed to apologize and thanks from their so-called nice chief. I did not wish to do it, however on the similar time, I wished to return house.”
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When Brittney Griner first bought into her jail cell, she observed a “big-a** knife” that had been left for her. She rapidly realized the knife wasn’t for her to make use of on others, however fairly on herself.
“Once we stroll into the cell, there is a rest room. There’s a bit of rinkity sink that leaks after which simply add a layer of mud, dust, grime, blood stains. Simply filth,” she stated. “I had a few shirts, a few pairs of sweats, the sneakers on my ft. One in all my shirts, I ripped it up and I used one to scrub myself. I used one as my rest room paper. With my soiled, soiled gap within the floor with feces throughout it. That was the second the place I simply felt the dirtiest and, like, lower than a human.”
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Prisoners had been allowed to go outdoors and frolicked on the jail grounds, however that was an disagreeable expertise.
“You are imagined to have quarter-hour outdoors. Fifteen minutes typically is 2 hours. It is a blizzard. It is chilly. It is winter. You are getting snowed on,” Brittney Griner stated. “And people days had been the hardest as a result of it is like, ‘Yo, come get us.’ We’re yelling. We’re screaming. We’re rattling the bars, get us in the home, get us in.”
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After Brittney Griner was caught with a hashish oil cartridge on the Moscow airport in February 2022, she was sentenced to 9 years in jail. In December that 12 months, she was freed in a 1-for-1 jail swap (Russia bought arms vendor Viktor Bout). Nonetheless, Brittany was upset that the swap did not additionally embrace Paul Whelan, an American Marine at present detained in Russia for allegedly spying. He was sentenced to 16 years in jail in 2018.
“I walked on [the airplane] and did not see him, possibly he is subsequent. Possibly they are going to carry him subsequent,” she stated of what was going by way of her head on the time. “They closed the door and I used to be like, are you severe? You are not going to let this man come house now?”