(Los Angeles) American basketball star Brittney Griner revealed Tuesday that she contemplated suicide during her nine months of imprisonment in Russia in 2022.
Griner was arrested in February 2022 in Russia in possession of a vaping device and liquid containing cannabis, a product banned in Russia, then sentenced to nine years in prison. She was released in December 2022 during a prisoner exchange.
Her captivity had sometimes made her feel “less than human”, says the 33-year-old player in an interview with the American television channel ABC.
“Were there times when you considered ending it?” », asks the journalist in an extract from the interview broadcast on Tuesday. “Yes, I didn’t think I was capable of enduring what I had to face,” replies, moved, Brittney Griner.
“The mattress had a huge stain of blood. I had no soap or toilet paper. At that moment I felt less than human,” adds the basketball player about her conditions of detention.
When she was sentenced to nine years in prison, “I was afraid of everything that could happen to me, I was entering the unknown,” says Griner, who at the time was playing for a Russian club during the offseason of the American WNBA professional championship.
ABC released excerpts of the interview on Tuesday, which will air on 1er may. Griner will publish a book next month about detention, titled Coming home (Go home).
Already a double Olympic champion (2016 and 2021), Griner was part of Team USA’s last training camp in early April, in preparation for the Paris Olympic Games (July 26-August 11).
This figure of the LGBTQ+ community, player for the Phoenix Mercury WNBA team nine times All-Star, had warned that she would never play abroad again except for a possible selection for the Olympics.