Moscow court docket extends journalist’s arrest on espionage fees, making certain he spends greater than a yr in jail.
Russia has prolonged the pre-trial detention of American journalist Evan Gershkovich by three months.
The Moscow Metropolis Courtroom ordered on Tuesday that the 32-year-old Wall Road Journal reporter stay behind bars till June 30 as he awaits trial on espionage fees. The USA embassy slammed the choice, which ensures that the journalist will spend a yr at the least in jail, as proof that Russia is “utilizing Americans as pawns to attain political ends”.
Gershkovich and the WSJ have persistently denied the allegations of spying since his arrest in March 2023 whereas on task within the Urals metropolis of Yekaterinburg. The US authorities has declared him wrongfully jailed.
Russian authorities haven’t detailed what, if any, proof they should assist the fees.
US ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy attended the court docket listening to, and reiterated that “the accusations in opposition to Evan are categorically unfaithful”.
“They don’t seem to be a unique interpretation of circumstances. They’re fiction,” Tracy advised reporters exterior the court docket.
The diplomat claimed that there’s “no justification for Evan’s continued detention and no clarification as to why Evan doing his job as a journalist constituted a criminal offense”.
“Evan’s case is just not about proof, due course of or rule of legislation,” she continued. “It’s about utilizing Americans as pawns to attain political ends, because the Kremlin can be doing within the case of Paul Whelan.”
Washington has pledged to do “no matter it takes” to convey dwelling Gershkovich and ex-Marine Paul Whelan, who was convicted in 2020 on spying fees that he too denies, and is serving 16 years in a penal colony.
Analysts recommend that Moscow could also be utilizing jailed US residents as bargaining chips in hovering US-Russian tensions over the Kremlin’s army operation in Ukraine.
The arrest has additionally been criticised for its impact on different journalists working in Russia.
Not less than two US residents arrested in Russia in recent times – together with WNBA star Brittney Griner – have been exchanged for Russians jailed within the US.
Gershkovich is the primary US reporter to be arrested on espionage fees in Russia since September 1986, when Nicholas Daniloff, a Moscow correspondent for US Information and World Report, was arrested by the KGB.
Daniloff was launched with out cost 20 days later in a swap for an worker of the Soviet Union’s United Nations mission who was arrested by the FBI, additionally on spying fees.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has mentioned Gershkovich might be launched in some unspecified time in the future in alternate for a Russian prisoner held overseas, however no such deal has thus far materialised.