Russia sentences US journalist Alsu Kurmasheva to 6.5 years in jail

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A court in Russia's Republic of Tatarstan sentenced Alsu Kurmasheva, a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) journalist with dual U.S. and Russian citizenship, to six and a half years in jail on a charge of "spreading false information" about Russia's Armed Forces, Associated Press reported on July 22. According to court records, the sentence was passed on July 19 in a secret trial, AP wrote. The case was launched over a book, "Saying no to war.

40 stories of Russians who oppose the Russian invasion of Ukraine," which was published in November 2022, RFE/RLE reported in December 2023. Kurmasheva was kept in pre-trial detention since October 2023 which was extended several times by the Russian court on a charge of violating the so-called "foreign agent" law regulations. According to RFE/RL, she lived in Prague with her family and traveled to Russia in May for a family emergency.

When Kurmasheva tried to leave Russia the following month, authorities confiscated both her Russian and American passports, supposedly on the premise that she had not registered her U.S. passport. Kurmasheva has been unable to leave Russia since then. RFE/RL wrote that she had been charged with the foreign agent violation while waiting for her passports to be returned.

Kurmasheva's arrest and extended pre-trial detention has been widely condemned by RFE/RL, the EU, Western nations, and a wide variety of NGOs, including the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Amnesty International, and others. Kurmasheva is the second journalist with American citizenship to be sentenced in Russia since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter from the U.S., was arrested in Russia in March 2023.

He was sentenced to 16 years in jail on what are widely viewed as trumped-up charges of espionage on July 19 as well.

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According to the New York Times, Gessen was convicted by the Basmanny District Court for spreading "false information" about Russia's military, having described the massacre committed by Russian Armed Forces in Bucha and neighboring communities during an interview in 2022 with a Russian journalist.