CNN
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Evan Gershkovich, the first American journalist to be arrested on espionage charges in Russia since the Cold War, was convicted of espionage in a Russian court and sentenced to 16 years in prison in a case that the U.S. government, Gershkovich’s newspaper and supporters have denounced as a false verdict.
The Yekaterinburg court announced the guilty verdict and sentence shortly after 3 p.m. local time (8 a.m. Eastern Time) on Friday.
The court heard closing arguments, with Wall Street Journal reporter Gershkovich delivering his closing statement behind closed doors Friday morning.
The swift resolution of the case came just weeks after Gershkovich appeared for the first time behind a glass cage with a freshly shaved head at the start of his trial on June 26. He stood that day with his arms folded, occasionally smiling and waving to reporters.
Gershkovich was arrested during a trip to Yekaterinburg while interviewing The Wall Street Journal in March 2023 and was subsequently accused of being a CIA spy, though Russian authorities have so far not released any public evidence to support their claims.
Within two weeks of his arrest in March 2023, the U.S. State Department found he had been unlawfully detained and called for his immediate release.
In a statement on Thursday, his employer said Evan had been wrongfully arrested. “Evan’s wrongful detention since his wrongful arrest 477 days ago is outrageous and must end now,” Dow Jones, a publication of the WSJ, said.
“While Russia orchestrates this shameful show trial, we continue to press for Evan’s immediate release and do everything in our power to make clear that he was simply doing his job as a journalist and that journalism is not a crime. Bring him home now.”
After his arrest, he was held in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo Prison, where he spent most of his day in a small, solitary confinement cell. He passed the time by writing letters to friends and family, his parents told the Journal, adding that he was only allowed one hour a day to go for walks.
Gershkovich, the U.S. government and the WSJ strongly deny the allegations against him.
U.S. and Western officials have accused Russia of using Gershkovich and other imprisoned foreigners as bargaining chips in a prisoner swap.
One high-profile swap in 2022 saw US basketball star Brittney Griner traded for arms dealer Viktor Bout, but Russia refused to release another jailed American, Paul Whelan, because it wanted a former Russian domestic intelligence colonel in return.
In an interview with right-wing US media personality Tucker Carlson in February, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that “an agreement could be reached” with the US for Gershkovich’s release, referring to the case of a Russian convicted of carrying out an assassination in Berlin in 2019.
The trial of Mr. Gershkovich, the American-born son of parents who defected to the United States during the Soviet era, has highlighted how Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine has damaged relations between Moscow and Washington.
In their indictment, Russian prosecutors said Gershkovich “collected secret information” about Russian tank factories “at the direction of the CIA” and “using meticulous, subversive methods”.
This story has been updated.
