A Russian court has convicted Alsu Kurmasheva a journalist working for the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Kurmasheva, a Russian-American was accused of spreading false information about the Russian army. She was sentenced to 6½ years in prison after a secret trial, court records and officials said Monday.
The conviction in the city of Kazan came last Friday, the same day that a court in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg 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. The U.S. government has labeled Gershkovich wrongfully detained by Russia, a distinction the State Department has not made in Kurmasheva’s case.
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 in prison 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.”
Asked about her during a regular press briefing on July 16, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller reiterated a general statement to reporters that “journalism is not a crime,” and that the U.S government had “urged her swift release” by Russia.
Miller said he did not “have any new information to provide about a wrongful detention determination.”
The journalism advocacy group Reporters Without Borders, which goes by its French acronym RSF, has launched a petition calling on the U.S. government to make a wrongful detention determination for Kurmasheva.
“Her targeting was undoubtedly the result of her journalism,” the group says on its campaign webpage, calling for the decision that it says “could marshal the full government resources to secure her release.”
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 charged with failing to register as a foreign agent while collecting information about the Russian military. Later she was also charged with spreading “false information” about the Russian military under legislation that has effectively criminalized any public expression about the war in Ukraine that deviates from the Kremlin line.
Kurmasheva was initially stopped in June 2023 at Kazan International Airport after traveling to Russia the previous month to visit her ailing elderly mother. Officials confiscated her U.S. and Russian passports and fined her for failing to register her U.S. passport. She was waiting for her passports to be returned when she was arrested on new charges in October that year.
Speaking to CBS News earlier this year, the reporter’s 15-year-old daughter Bibi Butorin said the family understood it was a risk for Kurmasheva to travel to Russia, “but she was only going to go for two weeks, and it was for my sick grandmother.”
“My mom is definitely my biggest inspiration,” Bibi said. “And I just miss her, like, more than I can possibly say. And I worry about her safety so much.”
The swift and secretive trials of Kurmasheva and Gershkovich in Russia’s highly politicized legal system raised hopes for a possible prisoner swap between Moscow and Washington. Russia has previously signaled a possible exchange involving Gershkovich but said a verdict in his case must come first. CBS
