Evan Gershkovich will appear in court in April. Source: Natalia Kolesnikova/Agence France-Presse – Getty Images
A Moscow court on Thursday rejected an appeal by Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, who sought an end to his pre-trial detention in Russia, where he was detained 12 weeks ago and charged with espionage.
Mr Gershkovich, an American journalist who has lived in Russia for almost six years, was arrested in late March and charged with espionage, which he denies. Last month his detention was extended to August 30. Although Russian prosecutors have not produced any evidence, he was held for 12 weeks in Moscow’s maximum-security Lefortovo prison, run by the KGB’s successor and known for its harsh prison conditions and extreme isolation.
The court denied his attorneys’ motion. The American Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracey was in attendance, as were Mr Gershkovich’s parents, Ella Millman and Mikhail Gershkovich.
The United States government and The Journal have vehemently denied the allegations. The White House declared that Mr. Gershkovich was “wrongly imprisoned,” which amounts to a political prisoner. The naming changes Washington’s approach to detaining an American abroad, usually based on assumptions that the prisoner was detained on arbitrary grounds or with no expectation of legitimate charges or a fair trial.
The Interfax news agency reported that Russia said on Thursday that it had received and is considering a request from the United States for a consular visit to the reporter. “There is no decision yet, but it is being considered,” the agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei A. Ryabkov as saying. Although Russia granted such a visit in April, it declined other similar requests.
Press freedom in Russia has plummeted under President Vladimir V. Putin, as he took authoritarian measures against journalists, as well as opposition and dissidents. Mr Putin had focused on local journalists, particularly since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, allowing foreign correspondents to work with a sense of freedom.
But that all changed on March 29, when Mr. Gershkovich was arrested while on a reporting trip in the central Russian city of Yekaterinburg, becoming the first Western journalist since the Cold War to be charged with espionage. If convicted, he faces 20 years in prison in a Russian penal colony.
The House of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution on June 13 calling on the Russian government to release Mr. Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, a former US Marine who is serving a 16-year sentence after a 2020 espionage conviction.
Dmitri A. Muratov, the Russian journalist who won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, praised Mr Gershkovich’s work during a media forum in Bonn, Germany, on Tuesday.
“I know him well – practically all of Moscow knows him well,” Mr Muratov said in an address to the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum. “He loves the country he works in. He is an incredible journalist and in no way a spy.”
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