Russia Sentences American Journalist To 16 Years In Prison

Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter falsely accused by Russian authorities of spying, was sentenced to 16 years in a high-security penal colony, after a hurried, secret trial that the U.S. government has condemned as a sham.

Gershkovich, a 32-year-old U.S. citizen, has been imprisoned since March of last year, when he was detained by the country’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, while on a reporting assignment in Yekaterinburg, around 900 miles east of Moscow.

“This fake, sham legal process that we are seeing play out has no bearing on the urgency that we have placed on seeking a release of Evan’s detention and seeking a release for Paul Whelan as well. And we’ll continue to work that process tirelessly,” Vedant Patel, deputy spokesman for the State Department, said Thursday.

In June, Russian prosecutors approved an indictment of Gershkovich, falsely alleging that he was gathering information about a Russian defense contractor on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency.

In fact, Gershkovich, who was accredited as a foreign correspondent by Russian authorities, was in Yekaterinburg and elsewhere in the Sverdlovsk region for the sole purpose of reporting for the Journal.