On Friday, the same day Russia sentenced American reporter Evan Gershkovich of the Wall Street Journal to 16 years in prison on fanciful charges of “espionage,” it sentenced Russian-American reporter Alsu Kurmasheva of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) to 6.5 years for “spreading false information about the Russian military.”
Like Gershkovich, Kurmasheva was rushed through a secret trial on charges rejected by both her employer and the U.S. government as entirely false. Kurmasheva’s trial in Tatarstan lasted only two days. As with Gershkovich, she was ordered to serve her time in a penal colony.
Kurmasheva, 47, works as an editor for the Tatar-Bashkir language version of RFE/RL. She was based in Prague but was visiting the Tatarstan regional capital of Kazan in June 2023 to handle a family emergency when she was arrested for spreading “false information” about the Russian army — a crime established under President Vladimir Putin’s harsh censorship laws after he ordered the invasion of Ukraine.
Kurmasheva was getting ready to board her flight back to Prague when she was taken into custody. She was slapped with a fine and additional charges for failing to register as a “foreign agent.” Russia considers all RFE/RL employees to be foreign agents because the network receives funding from the U.S. government.
The disinformation charges were apparently added after Russian investigators reviewed Kurmasheva’s 2022 book, Saying No to War, which included interviews with Russians opposed to the Ukraine war.
RFE/RL denounced the charges against Kurmasheva as “baseless” and “outrageous,” called her trial a “sham,” and demanded her immediate release. Unmoved by this response, a Russian court extended her lengthy pretrial detention even further in April and then sentenced her to prison on Friday.
Stephen Capus, the president and CEO of RFE/RL, denounced her trial and conviction on Monday as a “mockery of justice.”
“The only just outcome is for Alsu to be immediately released from prison by her Russian captors,” Capus said. “It’s beyond time for this American citizen, our dear colleague, to be reunited with her loving family.”
U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller on Monday described Kurmasheva as “a dedicated journalist who is being targeted by Russian authorities for her uncompromising commitment to speaking the truth and her principled reporting.”
“Journalism is not a crime, as you have heard us say on a number of occasions, and we continue to make very clear that she should be released,” Miller said.
RFE/RL noted that, unlike Gershkovich, the Biden administration has not officially designated Kurmasheva as “wrongfully detained,” a designation that would raise the profile of her case and get her treated as a foreign hostage by the State Department.
President Joe Biden ignored a letter from the U.S. National Press Club in May that argued Kurmasheva “meets all the criteria” and should have been designated as “wrongfully detained” immediately.
“We have listened to the State Department twist itself into a pretzel explaining how there are other factors to be considered besides the criteria, but we have yet to hear a clear reason why State cannot declare her wrongfully detained,” the U.S. National Press Club told Biden.
Kurmasheva’s family has also unsuccessfully pressed the Biden administration to treat her like Gershkovich. Her husband, Pavel Butorin, told CNN he was puzzled by the “double standard’ between the two cases and has never heard a coherent explanation from the Biden administration, only “talking points.”
“It was absolutely the right thing to do to designate Evan as wrongfully detained. He is wrongfully detained. I consider Alsu to be wrongfully detained,” Butorin said:
Obviously, she was detained and now remains in detention because of her work for an American media organization and her American citizenship, and they made it clear to her in no uncertain terms back in October that this was the reason why she was being detained.
Butorin said U.S. officials have not been given access to Kurmasheva since she was arrested, and her family has not been allowed to talk to her by phone. The couple has two daughters, aged 16 and 12.
According to Butorin, Kurmasheva’s mother in Russia is the only relative who has been allowed to see her, and her mother says her health is deteriorating in captivity.
“My daughters and I know Alsu has done nothing wrong. And the world knows it too. We need her home,” Butorin said after Kurmasheva’s conviction was announced.
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