US-Russian journalist Alsu Kurmasheva given 6.5 years in Russian jail in swift and secret trial

By Anna Chernova, Nathan Hodge and Jennifer Hansler, CNN

(CNN) — A Russian court has sentenced Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist, to six-and-a-half years in prison, state news agency TASS reported Monday.

The hearing, which was held behind closed doors, found Kurmasheva guilty of spreading false information about the Russian army, making her just the latest US journalist to be convicted in the country in recent months.

Kurmasheva’s charge was handed down in the city of Kazan on 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, following a trial condemned by his newspaper and the United States as a sham.

The convictions of Kurmasheva and Gershkovich on the same day – both in rapid, closed-door trials – have raised questions about whether the Kremlin is intending to use journalists in a prisoner swap with the US. When asked about this possibility earlier Monday, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “I have no answer to this question. I leave this question unanswered.”

Kurmasheva, a Prague-based journalist for the US-backed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), was detained in October 2023 after allegedly failing to register as a foreign agent, while on a trip to visit her mother in Russia. She was formally accused of spreading false information in December – charges her family and employer deny.

RFE/RL CEO Stephen Capus called Kurmasheva’s conviction “a mockery of justice” and demanded her immediate release.

“It’s beyond time for this American citizen, our dear colleague, to be reunited with her loving family,” Capus said in a statement, adding that “the only just outcome is for Alsu to be immediately released from prison by her Russian captors.”

Pavel Butorin, Kurmasheva’s husband, reacted to the court’s decision, telling CNN: “My daughters and I know Alsu has done nothing wrong. And the world knows it too. We need her home.”

Before her conviction, Butorin told CNN he was “so confident that she would get back to us that I bought Taylor Swift tickets” for August this year. “Little did we know that she would be arrested and taken away from us.”

Butorin told CNN that Kurmasheva had traveled to Russia to see her mother in May 2023, but was detained at the airport when trying to return home to Prague in early June. After her passports were taken, she was fined and placed under de facto – and then formal – house arrest for months, before being charged in December.

Butorin had asked that the US government also declare Kurmasheva as wrongfully detained, as it has done for Gershkovich – the first American journalist to be arrested on espionage charges in Russia since the Cold War.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller on Monday called for Kurmasheva to be released.

Speaking at a State Department briefing, Miller called Kurmasheva 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,” he said.

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