Russia sentences US journo to 16-years jail charging espionage

Moscow: Russia sentenced an American journalist to 16 years of imprisonment, accusing him of espionage. A Russian court convicted the journalist, Evan Greshkovich of the crime in a closed-door trial, Al Jazeera reported.

Greshkovich, a 32-year-old correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, has pleaded not guilty, and his employer, as well as the US administration, denounced the charges, calling them fabricated. The newspaper, as well as the US administration, said that the journo was doing his job with the accreditation from Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The court passed the sentence on Friday on the journo, who was arrested on March 2023. He was apprehended while he was on a reporting trip to Yekaterinburg. Russian prosecutors accused him of gathering secret information about Uralvagonzavod, a plant manufacturing tanks for Russia’s war in Ukraine, on the behest of the US intelligence agency CIA.

The Wall Street Journal issued a statement condemning the sentence. It read, “This disgraceful, sham conviction comes after Evan has spent 478 days in prison, wrongfully detained, away from his family and friends, prevented from reporting, all for doing his job as a journalist,” as quoted by Al Jazeera.

As per the news house, there is no evidence revealed in public that suggests that the journo is guilty, but the Kremlin’s statement that he was caught “red-handed” while spying on the tanker manufacturing facility in the Urals on the behest of the CIA.

Gershkovich became the first Western journalist to be arrested on charges of espionage since the fall of Soviet Russia.

The Sverdlovsk Regional Court in Yekaterinburg sentenced Greshkovich to 16 years when the prosecution demanded 18 years.