A court in Russia sentenced American Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich to 16 years in a maximum security penal colony on Friday.
The sentence was the culmination of a closed-door trial over espionage charges. The Journal has vehemently denied the allegations against Gershkovich and described the legal proceedings as a “shameful sham,” while the U.S. State Department considers the journalist “wrongfully detained.”
Gershkovich, 32, was detained by Russia’s FSB security service in March 2023 while on a reporting trip in the city of Yekaterinburg, about 900 miles east of Moscow. Prosecutors claimed Gershkovich was acting on behalf of the CIA when he allegedly obtained secret information about a Russian defense contractor.
