American journalist Evan Gershkovich has been found guilty of espionage by a Russian court and sentenced to 16 years in a high-security penal colony, after a secretive trial.
The young Wall Street Journal reporter was first arrested last March while on a reporting trip in the city of Yekaterinburg, the city in the remote Urals known for the infamous Romanov execution. He was arrested in Yekaterinburg because he was reporting there at the time.
Prosecutors accused him of working for the CIA, but never provided pubic evidence.
It marks the first conviction of a US journalist for espionage in Russia since the en of the Cold War.
Gershkovich has since spent 478 days in Russian prison.
Both sides have 15 days to appeal against the verdict, the judge said.
Washington accuses Russia of holding Gershkovich as a bargaining chip, to be used for a possible prisoner swap with Russian citizens in foreign jails – Vadim Krasikov, a Russian Federal Security Service hitman serving a life sentence in Germany for shooting dead a former Chechen rebel commander in Berlin.
In June, Moscow confirmed that contacts are ongoing regarding a potential prisoner exchange deal for Gershkovich, but Dmitri Peskov repeatedly insisted that those conversations were to be carried out in “absolute silence”.
Russian observers say a quick conviction could mean that an exchange is imminent, because according to Russian judicial practice, an exchange generally requires a verdict to be in place already, reports the BBC.
Unexpectedly, the hearing was brought forward to Thursday, though it had been originally scheduled for August.
Journalist advocacy group, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reminded the public that Russia currently has at least 22 journalists behind bars.
“Journalists are not pawns in geopolitical games. It’s time to stop hostage diplomacy and free him immediately,” CPJ Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna said in a statement.
Gershkovich’s iPhone and notepad were destroyed. He spent his jail time writing letters to his friends and family, say his parents – Soviet-Era immigrants to the USA.
