US-Russian journalist Alsu Kurmasheva convicted in rapid secret trial

A Russian court has convicted Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva of spreading false information about the Russian army and sentenced her to six and a half years in prison after a secret trial, court records and officials said.

The conviction in the city of Kazan came on Friday, the same day that a court in the city of Yekaterinburg convicted Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich of espionage and sentenced him to 16 years in prison in a case that the US called politically motivated.

Ms Kurmasheva, who worked for the US government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was an editor for the Tatar-Bashkir service, was convicted of spreading false information about the military, according to the website of the Supreme Court of Tatarstan.

Court spokesperson Natalya Loseva confirmed to the Associated Press that Ms Kurmasheva was sentenced to six and a half years in prison in a case classified as secret, with no details available about the nature of the accusations.

Asked about the verdict on Monday, Stephen Capus, RFE/RL president and chief executive, denounced the trial and conviction as “a mockery of justice” and said “the only just outcome is for Alsu to be immediately released from prison by her Russian captors”.

“It’s beyond time for this American citizen, our dear colleague, to be reunited with her loving family,” Mr Capus added in a statement to the AP.

Ms Kurmasheva, who lives in Prague with her husband and two daughters, was taken into custody in October 2023 and charged with failing to register as a foreign agent while collecting information about the Russian military.

Later, she was also charged with spreading false information about the Russian military under legislation that effectively criminalised any public expression about the war in Ukraine that deviates from the Kremlin line.

She was initially stopped in June 2023 at Kazan International Airport after traveling to Russia the previous month to visit her ailing elderly mother. Officials confiscated her US and Russian passports and fined her for failing to register her US passport.

She was waiting for her passports to be returned when she was arrested on new charges in October. RFE/RL has repeatedly called for her release.

RFE/RL was told by Russian authorities in 2017 to register as a foreign agent, but it has challenged Moscow’s use of foreign agent laws in the European Court of Human Rights. The organisation has been fined millions of dollars by Russia.

In February, RFE/RL was outlawed in Russia as an undesirable organisation.

The swift and secretive trials of Ms Kurmasheva and Mr Gershkovich in Russia’s highly politicised legal system raised hopes for a possible prisoner swap between Moscow and Washington. Russia has previously signalled a possible exchange involving Mr Gershkovich, but said a verdict in his case must come first.

Arrests of Americans are increasingly common in Russia, with nine US citizens known to be detained there as tensions between the two countries have escalated over fighting in Ukraine.

Mr Gershkovich, 32, was arrested on March 29 2023 while on a reporting trip to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg. Authorities claimed, without offering any evidence, that he was gathering secret information for the US.

He has been behind bars since his arrest, time that will be counted as part of his sentence. Most of that was in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo Prison — a czarist-era jail used during Josef Stalin’s purges, when executions were carried out in its basement. He was transferred to Yekaterinburg for the trial.

Mr Gershkovich was the first US journalist arrested on espionage charges since Nicholas Daniloff in 1986, at the height of the Cold War. Foreign journalists in Russia were shocked by his arrest, even though the country has enacted increasingly repressive laws on freedom of speech after sending troops into Ukraine.

US President Joe Biden said after his conviction that Mr Gershkovich “was targeted by the Russian government because he is a journalist and an American”.