A court in Russia has convicted Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist for the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, of spreading false information about the Russian army and sentenced her to 6½ years in prison after a secret trial, court records and officials said Monday.
The conviction in the city of Kazan came on Friday, the same day that a court in Yekaterinburg, a city in Russia, convicted Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich of espionage and sentenced him to 16 years in prison in a case that the U.S. called politically motivated.
Kurmasheva, a 47-year-old editor for RFE/RL’s 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 by phone that Kurmasheva was sentenced to 6½ years in a case classified as secret, with no details available of the nature of the accusations against her.
Asked Monday about the verdict, RFE/RL President and CEO Stephen Capus denounced the trial and conviction of Kurmasheva as “a mockery of justice.”
“The only just outcome is for Alsu to be immediately released from prison by her Russian captors,” he said in a statement.
“It’s beyond time for this American citizen, our dear colleague, to be reunited with her loving family,” Capus said in a statement to the AP.
Kurmasheva, who holds U.S. and Russian citizenship and lives in Prague with her husband and two daughters, was taken into custody in October 2023 and accused of failing to register as a foreign agent while collecting information about Russian military activities.
She was also charged with spreading “false information” about the Russian military, a new offense that was defined extremely and public expression of views not aligning with narratives from the Kremlin line.
The secret trial of Kurmasheva began in June 2023 at Kazan International Airport after she was detained at the airport upon returning from a trip to the United States.
The Associated Press
