Brittney Griner claims she was forced to make 'shank out of a toothbrush' and had spy cellmate while in Russian jail
Ben Thompson
Featured Image Credit: Christian Petersen/Getty Images, EVGENIA NOVOZHENINA/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
Brittney Griner has opened up about her time in a Russian prison.
The WNBA player was detained at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport in February 2022 on drug smuggling charges.
Griner had been in the country to play basketball for UMMC Ekaterinburg.
However, vape cartridges containing cannabis oil were found in her luggage.
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Griner was later convicted and locked up in one of the country's most notorious prisons - IK-2 in Mordovia, an isolated colony - after being found with 0.7 grams of cannabis oil on her person. She was sentenced to nine years in jail.
After nearly ten months behind bars, she was eventually freed in a prisoner swap with the US, which saw arms dealer Viktor Bout being returned to Russia.
Now, more than a year since her release, Griner has opened up about her experiences in an upcoming memoir, called Coming Home.
The memoir reveals that she had to take extra precautions to feel safe at night.
As per The Sun, the 33-year-old wrote: "I'd been lying in the dark, thinking, 'I ain't got a weapon.
"I can't make no shank like they did in Orange Is the New Black'."
Griner recollected being visited by her attorney, who came with some personal items for her.
One such item was a toothbrush.
"Thanks to Alex, I was armed," Griner wrote.
As if having to fashion a shank out of a toothbrush wasn't stressful enough, she also had to contend with some prying eyes.
Griner's cellmate had initially appeared sympathetic to her, but it turned out that she'd been keeping a diary documenting her every move.
Griner recalled: "My name, in English, was on page after page."
She only found out the journal's content while her cellmate was out at a medical appointment.
Alongside another cellmate, Griner read the pages, and discovered how the original cellmate had been spying on them.
"She'd kept notes on dozens of our conversations, dating back to our first day in the room," Griner wrote.
The two teamed up against the spying cellmate, who had apparently been passing notes to guards, and managed to get her removed from the cell.
In a previous interview, Griner had spoken of the mental toll that her imprisonment took on her, saying: "I wanted to take my life more than once in those first weeks.
"I felt like leaving here so badly.
"I didn't think I could get through what I needed to get through. I definitely thought about it. But then, I was just like, what if they didn't release my body to my family?
"And I was like, I can't put them through that. I have to endure this."
Coming Home is set to be released on May 7.