Brittney Griner reveals 'tortured' cellmate's vile crimes as WNBA star shares harrowing Russian prison story

WNBA star Brittney Griner has opened up on harrowing details about her former cellmate while in a Russian detention center.

The 34-year-old had been sentenced to nine years in a Russian prison after being caught with a cannabis oil cartridge at a Moscow airport in February 2022. She served 10 months before being released in a prisoner swap in December of the same year. 

Griner, who previously revealed she considered taking her own life while incarcerated, opened up on the horrifying ordeal this week. 

In particular, the Atlanta Dream center shed light on the vile crimes some of her cellmates were locked up for as she revealed prisoners were not separated based on their offenses. 

While most of her fellow prisoners were incarcerated on murder or drugs charges, one of Griner's cellmates was in prison for an even more abominable reason.   

'I had a cellmate in the very beginning. I thought something was off with her,' Griner told Cam Newton on his 'Funky Friday' podcast. 

'She acted like a child, but she was a grown woman, but she very much acted like an adolescent child. And then she had burn marks all over herself, and I found out after the fact that she was selling videos online of her husband and her child — together. And that's who they had me in a cell with.' 

Griner, who welcomed a baby boy with her wife last year, admitted she was left 'mad' at the prison for failing to separate inmates by crime, fearing other prisoners would 'associate me with that one.'

'There's not a lot of torturing from inmates with girls on the women's side,' Griner said. 'But if you in there for something like that, yeah, you going to get tortured. And they would put their cigarettes out on her and make her sleep at the door, too.' 

'I didn't really sleep at night 'cause she be over there singing and doing weird stuff at night,' she added of the cellmate. 

Griner had been stopped and detained at the Russian airport while returning to the country to play for her European team, UMMC Ekaterinburg, during the WNBA offseason in order to supplement her salary from the American league.

The Olympic gold medalist was transferred to the Russian penal colony in the town of Yavas in Mordovia – a region known for its prison camps - around 300 miles outside of Moscow after being sentenced to nine years in prison.

She was freed in a 1-for-1 swap with Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout in December 2022 that has since been criticized for its failure to return Paul Whelan, a US Marine imprisoned on espionage charges in 2018. 

Griner previously detailed the harrowing experience in an emotional interview with ABC's Robin Roberts.

'I wanted to take my life more than once in those first weeks,' she said in the sit-down interview on 20/20: Prisoner of Russia in May 2024. '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,' she added about considering suicide.

'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.'

The basketball superstar detailed the shocking conditions she had to endure, including finding a 'big-a** knife' left lying in her cell when she first entered.

'When we walk into the cell, there's a bathroom. There's a little rinkity sink that leaks and then just add a layer of dust, dirt, grime, blood stains. Just filth,' she said.

'I had a couple of shirts, a couple of pairs of sweats, the shoes on my feet,' she continued. 'One of my shirts, I ripped it up and I used one to clean myself. I used one as my toilet paper. With my dirty, dirty hole in the ground with feces all over it.

'That was the moment where I just felt the dirtiest and, like, less than a human.'

Griner also revealed that the pitiful food the prisoners were given to eat included cement-like porridge and little pieces of fish 'with nothing but bones in it'.

Since returning home to the United States, Griner has admitted to gaining a new perspective on life. 

During last year's Olympic Games in Paris, where the USA's women's basketball team claimed gold, Griner, who once boycotted the national anthem, was spotted getting emotional over the victory for the Stars and Stripes. 

'I didn't think I would be here,' she said, via Reuters. 'And then to be here and winning gold for my country, representing when my country fought for me so hard to even be standing here. This gold medal is going to hold a special place among the other two I was fortunate to win.' 

Griner signed a one-year deal with the Atlanta Dream in January ahead of the WNBA's 2025 season after spending 11 seasons with the Phoenix Mercury, who drafted her with the No. 1 overall pick in 2013.