Evan Gershkovich, the imprisoned reporter for The Wall Street Journal, appeared in a courtroom in a Russian city of Yekaterinburg on Thursday for the second hearing in his espionage trial, the court’s press service said, in a case that has been denounced by his employer and the United States government.
The hearing was initially scheduled to take place on Aug. 13. According to Mediazona, a Russian news outlet, the court moved it ahead at the request from Mr. Gershkovich’s lawyers.
The hearing came more than 15 months after Mr. Gershkovich, 32, was detained by security agents in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, about 900 miles east of Moscow. After spending more than a year in a high-security prison in Moscow, Mr. Gershkovich was transferred back to Yekaterinburg to stand trial.
Mr. Gershkovich, the first Western reporter to be detained on an espionage charge in Russia since the Cold War era, had worked in Russia as a journalist for various publications for more than five years before his arrest.
His employer and the U.S. government have denied the charges against him, calling them politically motivated. The State Department has designated Mr. Gershkovich as “wrongfully detained,” which effectively compels it to work for his safe release.
Held behind closed doors, the trial is unlikely to shed more light on the prosecution’s case. But the verdict is in little doubt. The Russian justice system overwhelmingly produces guilty verdicts.
Every hearing in the trial represents a significant step in Mr. Gershkovich’s legal case, which has been continuing in parallel with talks between Russian and American security services for a possible exchange of prisoners.
The Russian authorities have suggested that they could be open to a prisoner swap involving Mr. Gershkovich, but only after a verdict is handed down in his case.
An espionage trial usually takes about four months in Russia but can take up to a year, according to lawyers who have worked on such cases. Because Mr. Gershkovich’s case is classified, his lawyers are prohibited by law from speaking publicly about the case, under penalty of imprisonment.
In June, Russian prosecutors said they had finalized the espionage indictment against Mr. Gershkovich. They said that “under instructions from the C.I.A.” and “using painstaking conspiratorial methods,” Mr. Gershkovich “was collecting secret information” about a factory that produces tanks and other weapons in the Sverdlovsk region.
The prosecutors’ statement was the first time that Russian state representatives revealed details about the accusations against Mr. Gershkovich. But they have yet to provide any evidence to back up the charge.
The trial is being heard by Andrei N. Mineev, a judge on the Sverdlovsk regional court in Yekaterinburg, according to a statement from the court. In a 2021 interview with a Russian news website, Mr. Mineev said that he had only delivered about four acquittals in his decades-long career. If convicted, Mr. Gershkovich faces up to 20 years in prison.
The Wall Street Journal has called the proceedings a “sham trial.”
Mr. Gershkovich is one of several American citizens who have been detained in Russia in recent years, and his case has raised fears that the Kremlin is seeking to use American citizens as bargaining chips to be exchanged for Russians held in the West.
Other Americans held in Russia include Paul Whelan, a U.S. Marine veteran; Alsu Kurmasheva, an editor working for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; and Marc Fogel, an American teacher at the Anglo-American School in Moscow, who in 2022 was sentenced to 14 years in a penal colony for drug smuggling.
Last week a Russian court sentenced Yuri Malev, who holds both American and Russian citizenship, to three and a half years in a penal colony after he criticized Russia, its leadership and its war in Ukraine on social media.
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