WNBA superstar Brittney Griner has opened up in-depth about the traumatic 10 months she spent wrongfully detained in Russia after accidentally packing cannabis oil cartridges in her luggage.
In an exclusive interview with ABC News’ Robin Roberts on a special edition of “20/20,” the 6’9″ basketball phenom recounted the fateful “mental lapse” that disrupted her life and career, the inhumane prison conditions she endured, and her ultimately hard-won release through a controversial prisoner swap.
The Fateful Airport Incident
On February 17, 2022, Griner was arrested at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport after Russian authorities found vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage during screening.
Cannabis is illegal in Russia for both recreational and medicinal purposes. The two-time Olympic gold medalist and eight-time WNBA All-Star, who plays for the Phoenix Mercury, was traveling to play basketball in Russia during the WNBA’s offseason, a common practice for boosting income.
Recounting the incident to Roberts, the 31-year-old Griner explained her mindset that fateful morning: “I was just throwing stuff in my bag in panic mode.” She had overslept before her flight and hastily packed.
When Russian officials asked to search her bag at the airport, her heart sank realizing the forgotten cannabis cartridges were inside. “I’m just like, ‘Oh my God…how did I make this mistake?'” Griner said she had no intention of breaking Russian laws, using cannabis only for pain relief.
Nightmarish Russian Prison Conditions
For months after her arrest, Griner described enduring nightmarish conditions in Russian prisons while awaiting trial. In decrepit facilities, she lacked basics like toilet paper and slept on a stained, metal-bar mattress with just two thin sheets. The freezing temperatures exacerbated the deprivation.
“The toothpaste they gave us was expired like 15 years ago,” Griner told Roberts. “We used to put it on the black mold to try to kill it on the walls.” She added that temperatures were “really cold…there’s no rest” and eventually, she had to chop off her signature dreadlocks because “they started to freeze” from the lack of heat and dryness.
In early August 2022, Griner was convicted after a brief trial and sentenced to 9 years in a Russian penal colony on drug charges.
Her advocates criticized the excessive sentence as clearly politically motivated given Russia’s hostile relations with the U.S. over the Ukraine invasion.
At the notorious Mordovia penal colony, conditions were only more punishing. Part of an infamous gulag labor camp system, Griner worked 12+ hour days sewing uniforms for the Russian military, with only minimal nutrition. “It’s a work camp, you go there to work,” she told Roberts. “There is no rest.”
An Agonizing Wait for Freedom
From the outset, Griner’s wife Cherelle, the WNBA players’ union, Russian prisoner advocates, U.S. officials and President Biden himself declared the basketball star was being wrongfully detained for nothing more than a minor cannabis offense.
In May 2022, the U.S. State Department officially classified Griner as “wrongfully detained,” allowing greater resources to be used to negotiate her release.
However, tense relations between the U.S. and Russia over the Ukraine war made a resolution difficult for months. Despite Cherelle’s vocal advocacy, including directly appealing to President Biden, Russian courts rejected appeal after appeal of Griner’s harsh sentence.
Finally, in December 2022, after months of tense, high-stakes negotiations by U.S. officials, the breakthrough came in the form of a controversial prisoner swap brokered with Russia.
The Biden administration agreed to trade the infamous Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, nicknamed the “Merchant of Death,” for Griner’s freedom.
The Joyful but Bittersweet Homecoming
On December 8th, 2022, the swap was completed and Griner was released from Russian custody, ending her 10-month, unjustified detention.
Video captured the emotional moment when she walked across the tarmac in Abu Dhabi toward the U.S. officials and hugged her wife Cherelle for the first time in almost a year.
However, Griner’s joy was bittersweet. She voiced dismay that her fellow American Paul Whelan, a U.S. corporate security executive arrested on dubious espionage charges in 2018, was not included in the deal. “I was like…they are seriously not going to let this man come home right now?” Griner told Roberts.
Using Her Voice to Advocate
Since returning home, a relieved but remorseful Griner has been an outspoken advocate for Americans wrongfully detained abroad like Whelan.
In media interviews, public appearances and on social media, she has urgently appealed to President Biden and supporters to intensify efforts to “bring home” every American unjustly imprisoned by hostile regimes.
“President Biden, you brought me home and I know you are committed to bringing Paul Whelan and all Americans home too,” Griner said on Instagram. “I will use my platform to do whatever I can to help you.”
In her memoir “Coming Home,” released in May 2023, Griner provided a harrowing first-hand account of her Russian ordeal and her appreciation for all those who fought for her release.
She expressed both lingering trauma from the injustice but also resolve to ensure no other American has to endure that nightmare.
The near tragedy showed how a simple personal mistake spiraled into an international hostage ordeal.
But Brittney Griner’s resilience through the cruel deprivations and the ultimate success of widespread efforts demanding her release righted a terrible wrong and injustice of her cruel, undeserved Russian incarceration.
Her continuing activism aims to help end such unjust detentions for good.
