A Russian court has handed down its sentence for Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich after over a year of proceedings.
The court found Gershkovich, 32, guilty of “gathering secret information” while reporting on a trip to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg.
He has been sentenced to 16 years in prison.
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich stands in a glass cage in a courtroom in Yekaterinburg, Russia, Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (AP)
Prosecutors claimed Gershkovich gathered secret information on orders from the CIA about Uralvagonzavod, a plant about 90 miles north of Yekaterinburg that produces and repairs tanks and other military equipment.
The U.S. government classifies Gershkovich as “wrongfully detained,” and is seeking his immediate release through diplomatic channels. He has also personally denied all charges, along with The Wall Street Journal.
“Evan’s wrongful detention has been an outrage since his unjust arrest 477 days ago, and it must end now,” The Wall Street Journal said Thursday in a statement.
A Russian Federal Bailiffs Service employee patrols around the court building with the words reading, “Palace of justice,” on the front in Yekaterinburg, Russia, on Friday, July 19, 2024, ahead of the trial of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich’s suspected spying activities. (Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)
It continued, “Even as Russia orchestrates its shameful sham trial, we continue to do everything we can to push for Evan’s immediate release and to state unequivocally: Evan was doing his job as a journalist, and journalism is not a crime. Bring him home now.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously alluded to swapping the reporter for Vadim Krasikov, a Russian national jailed in 2019 for killing a Georgian citizen living in Berlin who had fought against Russian forces in Chechnya.
Judges said Krasikov was acting on the instructions of Russian authorities.
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Gershkovich, arrested on espionage charges, shapes a heart with his hands inside a defendants’ cage after a hearing to consider an appeal on his extended pre-trial detention, at the first court of appeal in Moscow earlier this year. (Natalia KOLESNIKOVA/AFP)
Gershkovich is the first known Western journalist to be arrested on espionage charges in post-Soviet Russia and faces up to 20 years in prison. He is being held in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison.
Fox News Digital’s Michael Dorgan contributed to this report.