Russian-American journalist sentenced to six.5 years in fast, secret trial

A court docket has convicted Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist for the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, of spreading false details about the Russian military and sentenced her to 6½ years in jail after a secret trial, court docket information and officers stated Monday.

Kurmasheva’s household, her employer and the U.S. authorities have rejected the fees in opposition to her and have referred to as for her launch.

The conviction in Kazan, the capital of Russia’s central area of Tatarstan, got here on Friday, the identical day a court docket within the Russian metropolis of Yekaterinburg convicted Wall Road Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich of espionage and sentenced him to 16 years in jail in a case that the U.S. referred to as politically motivated.

Kurmasheva, a 47-year-old editor for RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir language service, was convicted of “spreading false information” concerning the navy after a trial that lasted simply two days, in keeping with the web site of the Supreme Court docket of Tatarstan. Court docket spokesperson Natalya Loseva confirmed Kurmasheva’s conviction and revealed the sentence to The Related Press by cellphone within the case categorized as secret.

Kurmasheva was ordered to serve the sentence in a medium-security penal colony, Loseva stated.

“My daughters and I know Alsu has done nothing wrong. And the world knows it too. We need her home,” Kurmasheva’s husband, Pavel Butorin, stated in a publish Monday on X.

He had stated final yr the fees stemmed from a e book the Tatar-Bashkir service launched in 2022 referred to as “No to War” — “a collection of short stories of Russians who don’t want their country to be at war with Ukraine.” Butorin had stated the e book would not include any “false information.”

Matthew Miller, the U.S. State Division spokesman, stated Kurmasheva is being “targeted by Russian authorities for her uncompromising commitment to speaking the truth and her principled reporting.”

“We continue to make very clear that she should be released,” Miller added.

Requested concerning the case, RFE/RL President and CEO Stephen Capus denounced the trial and conviction of Kurmasheva as “a mockery of justice.” “The only just outcome is for Alsu to be immediately released from prison by her Russian captors,” he stated in an announcement to the AP.

“It’s beyond time for this American citizen, our dear colleague, to be reunited with her loving family,” Capus stated.

Kurmasheva, who holds U.S. and Russian citizenship and lives in Prague along with her husband and two daughters, was taken into custody in October 2023 and charged with failing to register as a international agent whereas accumulating details about the Russian navy.

Later, she was additionally charged with spreading “false information” concerning the Russian navy beneath laws that successfully criminalized any public expression concerning the struggle in Ukraine that deviates from the Kremlin line. The laws was adopted in March 2022, simply days after the Kremlin despatched troops into Ukraine, and has since been used to focus on Kremlin critics at residence and overseas, implicating scores of individuals in prison circumstances and sending dozens to jail.

Kurmasheva was initially stopped in June 2023 at Kazan Worldwide Airport after touring to Russia the earlier month to go to her ailing aged mom. Officers confiscated her U.S. and Russian passports and fined her for failing to register her U.S. passport. She was ready for her passports to be returned when she was arrested on new fees in October that yr. RFE/RL has repeatedly referred to as for her launch.

RFE/RL was advised by Russian authorities in 2017 to register as a international agent, nevertheless it has challenged Moscow’s use of international agent legal guidelines within the European Court docket of Human Rights. The group has been fined thousands and thousands of {dollars} by Russia.

The group Reporters With out Borders stated Kurmasheva’s conviction “illustrates the unprecedented level of despotism permeating a Russian judiciary that takes orders from the Kremlin.”

It referred to as for Kurmasheva’s quick launch and stated the aim of the sentence was to dissuade journalists from touring to Russia and put strain on the USA.

In February, RFE/RL was outlawed in Russia as an undesirable group. Its Tatar-Bashkir service is the one main worldwide information supplier reporting in these languages, along with Russian, to audiences within the multi-ethnic, Muslim-majority Volga-Urals area.

The swift and secretive trials of Kurmasheva and Gershkovich in Russia’s extremely politicized authorized system raised hopes for a doable prisoner swap between Moscow and Washington. Russia has beforehand signaled a doable change involving Gershkovich, however stated a verdict in his case should come first.

Arrests of People are more and more frequent in Russia, with 9 U.S. residents identified to be detained there as tensions between the 2 nations have escalated over preventing in Ukraine.

Gershkovich, 32, was arrested on March 29, 2023, whereas on a reporting journey to the Ural Mountains metropolis of Yekaterinburg. Authorities claimed, with out providing any proof, that he was gathering secret info for the U.S.

He has been behind bars since his arrest, time that might be counted as a part of his sentence. Most of that was in Moscow’s infamous Lefortovo Jail — a czarist-era lockup used throughout Josef Stalin’s purges, when executions had been carried out in its basement. He was transferred to Yekaterinburg for the trial.

Gershkovich was the primary U.S. journalist arrested on espionage fees since Nicholas Daniloff in 1986, on the top of the Chilly Struggle. International journalists in Russia had been shocked by Gershkovich’s arrest, though the nation has enacted more and more repressive legal guidelines on freedom of speech after sending troops into Ukraine.

U.S. President Joe Biden stated after his conviction that Gershkovich “was targeted by the Russian government because he is a journalist and an American.”

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield accused Moscow final week of treating “human beings as bargaining chips.” She singled out Gershkovich and ex-Marine Paul Whelan, 53, a company safety director from Michigan, who’s serving a 16-year sentence after being convicted on spying fees that he and the U.S. denied.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated Friday that in relation to Gershkovich, Whelan and different People wrongfully detained in Russia and elsewhere, the U.S. is engaged on the circumstances “quite literally every day.”

Sam Greene of the Middle for European Coverage Evaluation stated the conviction and sentencing of Kurmasheva and Gershkovich on the identical day “suggests — but does not prove — that the Kremlin is preparing a deal. More likely, they are preparing to offer up a negotiating table that Washington will find it difficult to ignore.”

In a collection of posts on X, Greene harassed that “the availability of a negotiating table shouldn’t be confused with the availability of a deal,” and that Moscow has no real interest in releasing its prisoners — however it’s more likely to “seek the highest possible price for its bargaining chips, and to seek additional concessions along the way just to keep the talks going.”

Washington “should obviously do what it can” to get Gershkovich, Kurmasheva, imprisoned opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza and different political prisoners out, he stated, including: “But if Moscow demands what it really wants — the abandonment of Ukraine — what then?”