Basketball star Brittney Grinner writes a book about her period in a Russian penal colony: ‘I no longer felt like a human being’

Brittney Griner (33) sometimes has trouble falling asleep in hotel rooms. Small spaces with one bed remind her of the police cell in Moscow where she was locked up shortly after her arrest. She used a torn T-shirt as toilet paper, and there was a large blood stain on her mattress.

On chilly days in her hometown of Phoenix, she sometimes gets flashbacks to the penal colony where she spent the last month of her captivity. She cut off her long dreadlocks because they kept freezing.

Nearly a year and a half after her release in December 2022, Griner is still struggling with her Russian nightmare, according to her new book Coming home. In it, the basketball star talks for the first time about the hardships of her almost ten-month captivity.

“I still have a long way to go,” Griner said in an interview with ABC news channel to promote her book. Crying: ‘I thought I would never come home again.’

Cannabis oil

Griner is one of America’s best and most famous basketball players. She was arrested at Moscow airport on February 15, 2022 after cannabis oil was found in her luggage. She was sentenced to nine years in prison, but was eventually released early through a controversial prisoner exchange with arms dealer Viktor Bout.

The 2.06 meter tall basketball star did not want to elaborate on the details of her captivity until now. She kept it for her book. Griner describes how she was sometimes sent into the freezing cold for hours wearing thin clothing, how she was transported with her knees to her chin in small passenger cars and humiliated by guards.

In her police cell in Moscow, with a smelly hole in the floor for a toilet and nothing to wash herself in, she had thought about suicide. ‘I didn’t feel like a human being anymore.’ Thoughts of her wife Cherelle, family and friends kept her going.

Last year, Griner made her return to Phoenix Mercury, one of the twelve clubs in the highest American basketball league, WNBA. She was good, but not as good as before. She had also suffered physical damage in captivity. Griner ate poorly, had little room to move and was sent to a vet with an eye problem. She also started smoking to combat stress, sometimes a pack a day.

Overslept

Her arrest on February 15, 2022 was the result of a simple mistake, Griner writes in her book. She had overslept on the morning of her flight to Russia, where she played annually for a club from Yekaterinburg outside the American season. She had packed her things hastily and in panic.

It was only when customs in Moscow told her to remove her belongings from a side pocket of her backpack that she discovered her mistake. Griner had left two vials of cannabis oil in her bag.

A doctor had prescribed her the drug as a remedy for the physical pain, which Griner describes as ‘immense’, from nine seasons of full-time basketball. Cannabis is legal in Phoenix, but prohibited in Russia. “I knew right away I was in trouble,” Griner told ABC. ‘It felt like I was falling down an elevator.’ Before she knew it, she was in a police cell in Moscow.

Griner’s hopes for a quick release evaporated on February 24, when Russian President Putin began his invasion of Ukraine. Suddenly the basketball star was a political pawn. According to the US government, her detention was unlawful, but Griner’s detention was repeatedly extended. She was transported to a women’s prison outside Moscow.

Sometimes she feared for her safety, she writes. As a lesbian woman and open advocate of LGBTI rights, she felt vulnerable in the hands of the Russian government. During psychiatric evaluations, she was asked questions about her “sick thoughts.” Griner feared being admitted to a clinic.

She was mocked by guards. A Russian cellmate who spoke fluent English translated what they said about her for her. She was called a man. A freak. After a shower, one of the guards pushed her towel aside with his baton so he could examine her breasts.

Sometimes it felt like she was back at her high school, where she was bullied for her height and deep voice. Only on the basketball court, where her stature was an advantage, did she feel comfortable. Griner became a phenomenon in her sport, a star player who was one of the few women who could dunk the ball through the ring.

T-shirts

In her own country, the call for her release became louder over time. Stars from her league, but also the male NBA, drew attention to Griner with texts on T-shirts. Her imprisonment led to criticism of salaries in the WNBA. Like many other basketball players, Griner played abroad to earn extra money. In the American competition she could earn a maximum of 234 thousand dollars, in the Russian competition four times that amount. With better pay, Griner probably never would have had to be in Moscow.

In July, the woman from Houston, Texas, was horrified to be sentenced to nine years in prison. In the courtroom, her lawyer stuck a phone through the bars of her cage and Griner cried over a video link with her wife Cherelle. A few months later, she was transported on a dark train to a penal colony in Mordovia, where she was locked in a cell with fifty other women – and one toilet.

Griner was put to work: in shifts of sometimes fifteen hours she sewed uniforms for Russian soldiers. Other times she had to shovel snow outside in the freezing cold. In November, just as she had lost all hope of release, word reached her about an impending prisoner swap that the White House had been working on behind the scenes for months. Griner was transported to another prison, where she was forced to undress in the presence of a doctor and seven armed guards. It was a final humiliation.

On December 2, a guard slipped a note under her door: “You’re going home tomorrow.” Griner was free, but not until she was forced to write a letter to President Putin. “I had to ask for forgiveness from the so-called great leader,” Griner told ABC. She did it with great reluctance. “I wanted to go home.”

A day later, Griner walked into arms dealer Viktor Bout at an airport in Abu Dhabi. The man shook her hand and congratulated her. Griner walked on to the plane where Bout had just gotten off. The destination was San Antonio, America, where Griner was reunited with her wife on the runway.

Homophobia

In the US, reactions to her release were mixed. Joy prevailed, but some, especially conservative Americans, felt that Biden had added too much water. Griner, a forerunner in the fight against racism and homophobia, became the target of far-right anger. She was attacked by a conservative media personality at a Dallas airport last year. “You hate America,” the man snapped at her.

On social media she read the familiar, annoying comments about her appearance. Man. Freak. They should have left her in her cell, some wrote. Griner was surprised at the hatred her release had provoked.

Next week she starts a new season with Phoenix Mercury. According to insiders, she makes a cheerful impression during training. Last year she had thought about quitting, it was so difficult at times, but physically she is now ‘back to her old self’, she told The New York Times.

Mentally things are slowly moving in the right direction again. More often than before, Griner retreats to the rocky area around her hometown of Phoenix. She says nature brings her peace. She can also look forward to a beautiful summer. In July she will become a mother for the first time, then she will go to France with the American basketball team. Griner no longer wants to travel abroad since her arrest in Moscow, but she is happy to make an exception for the Paris Games.