Radio journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, who holds dual American and Russian citizenship, has been sentences to 6 1/2 years in prison under Russia’s catch-all foreign agent law. Photo courtesy of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
July 22 (UPI) — A Russian-American journalist received a 6 1/2-year prison sentence after a court in Russia held a secret trial after prosecutors alleged violations of Russia’s tough censorship laws that targeting journalists and others.
The defendant, Alsu Kurmasheva, who had been based in the Czech Republic, was an editor who covers Russia’s Volga-Ural region from the network’s Prague headquarters. She was one of the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty‘s more than 700 full-time journalists and 1,300 freelancers who report news in 27 languages in 23 different nations.
Her trial Friday was called “a mockery of justice” by the organization’s president and chief executive, Stephen Capus, who said how “the only just outcome is for Alsu to be immediately released from prison by her Russian captors.”
Kurmasheva holds dual U.S-Russian citizenship and was working for the organization when taken into custody by Russian officials in October last year while visiting her mother in Kazan, southwest Russia,
She initially had been detained at Kazan Airport on June 2 while returning to Prague.
Prosecutors have charged the veteran journalist and editor for failing to register as a foreign agent in alleged violation of Russia’s strict censorship laws She also was accused of spreading “falsehoods” about Russia’s military.
Kurmasheva, 47, is married to a fellow Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty employee and has two children. She is the second American journalist to have been sentenced in Russia in recent years over what U.S. observers called trumped-up charges.
“My daughters and I know Alsu has done nothing wrong,” her husband, Pavel Butorin, wrote on X Monday morning local time. “And the world knows it, too. We need her home.”
In May, a Russian court had originally extended Kurmasheva’s pretrial detention until Aug. 5. The court rejected a request for house arrest. She faced up to 10 years in a Russian prison.
At least 30 journalists are known to be detained in Russia, facing lengthy prison sentences on spurious charges of so-called crimes like “disseminating false information” and “discrediting” the Russian military. Also, 12 of 17 foreign journalists currently detained worldwide are being held in Russia, according to the United Nations.
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, an American citizen, was sentenced to 16 years in a high-security penal colony on espionage charges. Russian authorities claimed he was working as a CIA operative in Yekaterinburg during a 2023 assignment.
A European Commission official on Monday afternoon railed against Moscow’s “appalling” treatment of Kurmasheva, calling for her to be set free.
“Journalists freely informing us is a key principle of #democracy, which #Kremlin clearly does not respect,” Vera Jourova, the EU’s vice president for values and transparency, posted on X.
The Russian government has intensified its crackdown on journalists and the free press since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, arresting six other journalists as recently as March while they were working for other independent news outlets in Russia on the one-year anniversary eve of Gershkovich’s detention.
“Russia is proving once again its intolerance to reporting about the war in Ukraine that doesn’t toe the Kremlin’s line,” Freedom of the Press wrote on social media, calling on the Biden administration to prioritize the release of the two American journalists.
The United States has condemned Kurmasheva’s arrest. However, unlike Gershkovich, Kurmasheva has yet to be designated by the State Department as having been “wrongfully detained,” a status granted to Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, an American citizen convicted in 2020 of spying.
The National Press Club and 18 other media groups called on President Joe Biden in a May 31 letter for Kurmasheva to be recognized as a wrongfully detained person.
