A Russian court on Friday convicted Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich on espionage charges his employer and the US have rejected as a sham.
He was sentenced to 16 years in prison after a secretive and rapid trial in the country’s highly politicised legal system.
Gershkovich, his head shaved, looked calm as he stood in a glass defendants’ cage in the Sverdlovsk Regional Court and listened impassively to the verdict. When the judge asked him if he understood it, the journalist replied yes.
After the judge finished reading the verdict, someone in the courtroom shouted, “Evan, we love you!”
Gershkovich, his employer and the US government vehemently denied the charges.
US officials and The Wall Street Journal have denounced the trial as a sham.
Gershkovich, 32, was detained in March 2023 while on a reporting trip to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg and accused of spying for the US, and has been behind bars ever since.
He was the first US journalist taken into custody on espionage charges since Nicholas Daniloff in 1986, at the height of the Cold War.
Gershkovich’s arrest shocked foreign journalists in Russia, even though the country has enacted increasingly repressive laws on freedom of speech after sending troops into Ukraine.
Closing arguments took place behind closed doors at the trial, where Gershkovich did not admit any guilt, according to the court’s press service.
Gershkovich was in court for a second straight day on Friday for the closed proceedings, where officials said prosecutors requested an 18-year sentence in a high-security prison.
He has been behind bars since his arrest, which will be counted as part of his sentence. Much of that was spent in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo Prison — a czarist-era lockup used during Josef Stalin’s purges, when executions were carried out in its basement. He was transferred to Yekaterinburg for the trial.
Unlike the trial’s opening on June 26 in Yekaterinburg and previous hearings in Moscow in which reporters were allowed to see Gershkovich briefly before sessions began, there was no access to the courtroom on Thursday, but media was allowed in the court on Friday for the verdict. Espionage and treason cases are typically shrouded in secrecy.
Russian courts convict more than 99% of defendants, and prosecutors can appeal against sentences that they regard as too lenient. They even can appeal against acquittals.
“This disgraceful, sham conviction comes after Evan has spent 478 days in prison, wrongfully detained, away from his family and friends, prevented from reporting, all for doing his job as a journalist,” Dow Jones chief executive and Wall Street Journal publisher Almar Latour and editor in chief Emma Tucker said in a statement.
“We will continue to do everything possible to press for Evan’s release and to support his family. Journalism is not a crime, and we will not rest until he’s released. This must end now,” the statement added.
The US State Department has declared Gershkovich “wrongfully detained”, committing the government to assertively seek his release.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday at the United Nations that Moscow and Washington’s “special services” are discussing an exchange involving Gershkovich. Russia has previously signalled the possibility of a swap, but said a verdict would have to come first. Even after a verdict, any such deal could take months or years.
US State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel on Thursday declined to discuss negotiations about a possible exchange, but said: “We have been clear from the get-go that Evan did nothing wrong and should not have been detained.
“To date, Russia has provided no evidence of a crime and has failed to justify Evan’s continued detention.”
Asked on Friday about a possible prisoner swap involving Gershkovich, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to comment.
Russian President Vladimir Putin hinted earlier this year that he would be open to swapping Gershkovich for Vadim Krasikov, a Russian serving a life sentence for the 2019 killing in Berlin of a Georgian citizen of Chechen descent.
Speaking to reporters after the verdict, prosecutor Mikael Ozdoyev reaffirmed that Gershkovich was accused of gathering secret information about production and repair of military equipment at Uralvagonzavod, a huge industrial plant about 150 kilometres (90 miles) north of Yekaterinburg that manufactures tanks.
Mr Ozdoyev repeated the claim that Gershkovich was acting on instructions from the CIA and tried to conceal his action.
US officials have dismissed this as bogus.
The Federal Security Service, or FSB, alleged he was acting on US orders to collect state secrets but provided no evidence to support that accusation.
Mr Lavrov on Wednesday reaffirmed the Kremlin claim that the government has “irrefutable evidence” against Gershkovich, although neither he nor any other Russian official has ever disclosed it.
US officials also have dismissed the charges as bogus.
“Evan has never been employed by the United States government. Evan is not a spy. Journalism is not a crime. And Evan should never have been detained in the first place,” White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said last month.
Russia’s interpretation of what constitutes high crimes such as espionage and treason is broad, with authorities often going after people who share publicly available information with foreigners and accusing them of divulging state secrets.
