A Russian court on Tuesday, October 10, rejected the appeal of American journalist Evan Gershkovich who challenged the extension of his pre-trial detention for espionage, accusations that the reporter, arrested in March, rejects.
Judge Yuriy Passiounin of the Moscow City Court decided to leave “unchanged” the decision to keep the reporter in detention at least until November 30, according to an Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalist present at the audience. This respected 31-year-old reporter had appealed the three-month extension of his pre-trial detention, decided at the end of August.
During the hearing, Evan Gershkovich, standing in the cage reserved for the accused, gave a few smiles to the journalists he recognized.
Accusations never substantiated
A journalist at the Wall Street Journal, he was arrested by Russian security services during a report in Yekaterinburg, in the Urals, on March 29. Since then, he has been detained in Lefortovo prison in Moscow. Evan Gershkovich, who also worked for the AFP in Moscow in the past, is accused of espionage, a crime punishable by twenty years in prison, but he rejects these accusations, as do Washington, his newspaper, his friends and his family .
Russia has never substantiated its accusations or publicly provided evidence, and the entire procedure has been classified. No date for his trial has been set at this time.
In recent years, several U.S. citizens have been arrested and given long sentences in Russia; Washington accuses Moscow of wanting to exchange them for Russians detained in the United States.