Wall Street Journal Protests Russian Court’s Sentence of Journalist

The Wall Street Journal has protested the 16-year prison sentence handed down by Russian courts to its reporter Evan Gershkovich in a closed court hearing on Friday.

“This comes after Evan spent 478 days in jail, wrongly detained, away from his family and friends (…) and simply doing his job as a journalist,” the paper’s officials said in a statement, vowing to continue the fight to secure his release.

In a separate statement, the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Reporters Without Borders (RSF) called the verdict “yet another egregious example of Russia’s unacceptable hostage-taking.”

“The verdict (…) is the result of a trial that can in no way be considered fair or free. This verdict must be quashed immediately,” added Rebecca Vincent, RSF’s campaign director, in a statement.

This Friday, Russian justice sentenced American journalist Evan Gershkovich to 16 years in prison on charges of espionage for allegedly accessing classified information about the country’s military industry.

A 32-year-old Wall Street Journal journalist arrested in March 2023 in Yekaterinburg, the capital of the Urals, became the first American reporter to be prosecuted for espionage since the end of the Cold War.

The charges brought by the Russian judicial system were rejected by the journalist, his relatives and the US government.

Gershkovich must serve his sentence in a “strict regime” prison colony, Judge Andrei Mineyev ruled, and this must involve very strict conditions of detention, comparable to “normal regime”, AFP reports.

The journalist declared his innocence and exercised his right to a “last word” before sentencing, as court press secretary Ekaterina Maslennikova previously told the media.

The prosecutor asked for 18 years in prison.

If an appeal is decided and the sentence is upheld, you will have to be sent to a penal colony, a process that could take several days or weeks.