A Russian court has sentenced Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist for US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), to 6-1/2 years in prison for spreading false information about the Russian army, the court revealed on Monday.
A spokesperson for the court in the southern city of Kazan said Kurmasheva had been sentenced on Friday. That was the same day that a separate court in Yekaterinburg sentenced another US citizen, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, to 16 years in prison for espionage following a trial condemned by his newspaper and the US as a sham.
Kurmasheva’s lawyer did not immediately reply to a Reuters question if she would appeal.
RFE/RL president and CEO Stephen Capus called the trial and conviction “a mockery of justice”, adding that “the only just outcome is for Alsu to be immediately released from prison by her Russian captors”.
“It’s beyond time for this American citizen, our dear colleague, to be reunited with her loving family,” Capus said in a statement.
Kurmasheva, 47, is based in Prague and has been held since October 18 when she was arrested while visiting family in her native Russian region of Tatarstan. She had first been detained briefly earlier last year while trying to leave Russia, and her passports were confiscated.
A court initially found her guilty of failing to declare that she had a US passport, mandatory under Russian law, and fined her. A week later, she was charged with failing to register as a “foreign agent”, to which she has pleaded not guilty.
Kurmasheva’s husband, Pavel Butorin, who also works for RFE/RL, said her arrest was related to a book that she had edited entitled “Saying No to War. 40 Stories of Russians Who Oppose the Russian attack on Ukraine“.
Gershkovich and Kurmasheva are among at least a half dozen Americans convicted and jailed in Russia amid the biggest breakdown of relations between Moscow and the West since the Cold War.
RFE/RL, which says Kurmasheva’s detention is unjust, is funded by the US Congress. Russia has designated it as a “foreign agent”, a classification that carries negative Cold War overtones.
Butorin had petitioned for the US government to designate Kurmasheva as wrongfully detained, as Washington views the case of Gershkovich, which would open up diplomatic avenues to negotiate her release.