A Moscow court has rejected an appeal over the detention of jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was detained in March. The Court confirmed the preventive detention, ruling out for the moment the transfer to another prison and refusing to allow house arrest or grant bail.
Gershkovich will remain in provisional detention until May 29, although the Russian authorities may extend it.
Almost three weeks after the journalist was arrested for espionage, an accusation that his outlet and the US government vehemently deny, the detainee was shown in public for the first time.
Gershkovich appeared in court standing inside a glass case, according to courtroom footage shown on Russian state television. He was wearing jeans and a blue plaid shirt. The people around him were forbidden to talk to him, but he was allowed to take pictures.
At times Gershkovich would walk inside the box in which he appeared in court. To his left, but on the other side of the glass, was Ambassador Lynne Tracy.
The Kremlin says Gershkovich was “caught red-handed” but no one in Russia has released any evidence to back this up. Virtually all espionage trials in Russia end in a guilty verdict, and conviction carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
Gershkovich was accredited to work as a journalist in Russia by the Russian Foreign Ministry at the time of his arrest while reporting in the Ural city of Yekaterinburg. Hired by the Wall Street Journal shortly before last year’s invasion of Ukraine, Gershkovich had been reporting on Russia for more than five years at the time of his arrest. The 31-year-old journalist is fluent in Russian. He is the son of émigrés who left the Soviet Union for the United States during the Cold War.
On Monday the US ambassador to Russia visited Gershkovich in Lefortovo, the first access to him granted to US officials since his arrest on March 29. “He is in good health and remains strong,” Lynne Tracy said: “We reiterate our call for his immediate release.”
“I want to say that I am not losing hope,” Gershkovich wrote in a letter to his family a few days ago.
Moscow could use the journalist to trade him for relevant US prisoners, but the process will take time. Investigators are still working out the details of the case, which could drag on for months or years if a similar case is taken as a model: that of fellow American Paul Whelan, a former Marine who was arrested in December 2018. Whelan, who was incarcerated for 18 months in Lefortovo, like Gershkovich, and who was later sentenced to 16 years in June 2020 on espionage charges.
After knowing the judicial decision, the Russian government gave another blow to the table. The ambassadors in Moscow of the US, Britain and Canada were summoned to the Foreign Ministry in connection with serious interference in Russian affairs and for activities “not corresponding” to diplomatic status. The three have defended Gershkovich and Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian opponent who was sentenced Monday to 25 years in prison for treason.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project