The Kremlin’s “butcher” continues to persecute journalists, it has a well-documented and bloody trail, Foreign Minister Baiba Braze (New Unity) tweeted.
She stresses that the 16-year sentence handed down to American journalist Evan Gershkovic on espionage charges is baseless and deplorable.
The AFP news agency reports that US reporter Evan Gershkovich was sentenced by a Russian court on Friday to 16 years prison for “espionage”, a verdict slammed as “despicable”, “disgraceful” and a “sham” by Western governments and his employer.
Gershkovich was sentenced after just three court sessions in a secretive closed-door trial in the Urals City of Yekaterinburg, the city where he was arrested while on a reporting trip in March 2023.
In court on Friday, Gershkovich did not appear to react to the sentencing, standing in a glass defendants’ cage in dark trousers and a T-shirt. He waved to his journalist colleagues as he was led away.
Judge Andrei Mineyev said said Gershkovich would be sent to a “strict regime colony” — a Russian prison camp notorious for harsh conditions and strict rules.
The Wall Street Journal correspondent, who pleaded not guilty, became the first journalist in Russia to be charged with spying since the Cold War when he was detained in 2023.
He has spent almost 16 months in detention on charges the United States government and his employer have always said are fabricated.
“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,” the Journal’s publisher Almar Latour and editor-in-chief Emma Tucker said in a statement.
Washington believes he is being held as a bargaining chip to secure the release of Russians convicted abroad.
Source: BNS
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