July 18, 2024, 9:50 AM
July 18, 2024, 9:50 AM
A Russian court on Thursday resumed the trial of American journalist Evan Gershkovich for espionage, an accusation that both his newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, and the White House have called false.
The trial was postponed for almost a month at the request of his defence and resumed on Thursday at around 11:00 am (06:00 GMT) behind closed doors in a court in the city of Yekaterinburg, a judicial spokesman told AFP.
The 32-year-old reporter was arrested in March 2023 while reporting in the Urals city and has been in prison in Russia for 16 months since then.
He is the first Western journalist to be charged with espionage in Russia since Soviet times and faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Both Russia and the United States have expressed openness to agreeing to an exchange for the journalist’s release, but neither side has given any indication of when that might happen.
The Kremlin has so far not publicly provided evidence of the spying allegations, but says Gershkovich was caught “red-handed” and was working for the CIA.
Prosecutors say he was collecting information from Russian tank manufacturer Uralvagonzavod.
The United States says the charges are fabricated and a United Nations panel of experts declared in July that his detention was arbitrary.
Gershkovich, who worked for AFP before becoming Moscow correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, made his last public appearance in court on June 26, smiling and with a shaved head.
Russia’s prison service refused to tell AFP where he would be held after the trial or why he had shaved his head.
For now, he can only communicate with his family and friends through letters read and censored by the prison administration. In them he says he remains in good spirits and resigns himself to his sentence.
“He’s coping as best he can,” his mother, Ella Milman, told her son’s newspaper in March.
