A Russian court on Tuesday extended the pretrial detention of American journalist Evan Gershkovich, forcing the Wall Street Journal reporter to remain in custody until next month.
The Moscow City Court rejected an appeal by Gershkovych’s lawyers against his detention and upheld an earlier decision to keep him in custody until March 30, 2024.
The sentence means Gershkovic, 32, will spend a full year in prison since his arrest in March 2023 during a reporting trip to the Russian city of Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains. .
Following his arrest, Gershkovic was charged with espionage, but Gershkovic, the Wall Street Journal and the White House rejected the charges and announced that Gershkovic had been wrongly detained.
Russian authorities have not shared any evidence supporting the spying charges. Gershkovitch became the first Western journalist to be arrested on suspicion of espionage since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Tuesday’s appeal was a technical hearing on an earlier ruling extending pretrial detention and did not concern the substance of the case.
U.S. Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy, who attended the hearing, condemned Mr. Gershkovitch’s continued detention.
“The charges against Evan are baseless. According to the Moscow Times, the Russian government imprisoned Evan just to report the news,” Tracy said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson earlier this month that Russia was ready to negotiate for Gershkovych’s release.
President Putin claimed that Mr. Gershkovych was “caught red-handed while secretly obtaining classified information,” and that the Russian government had agreed to release Vadim Krasikov, a Russian national serving a life sentence in Germany. He hinted at the possibility of exchanging Gershkovic.
German officials did not comment on whether there were any efforts by Russia to secure the exchange.
The U.S. State Department announced in December that Russia had rejected several offers to free Gershkovic and Paul Whelan, a corporate security executive from Michigan who has been imprisoned in Russia since December 2018. .
Mr. Whelan was also arrested on espionage-related charges, which he and the government deny, but was sentenced to 16 years in prison.
with post wire
