A court in Russia on Tuesday ruled to extend the detention of an American Wall Street Journal reporter arrested in March over an allegation of espionage.
The ruling is the third time that Evan Gershkovich’s detention has been extended since he was first taken into custody during a reporting trip in the city of Yekaterinburg in March. The 32-year-old will now remain locked up while awaiting trial until at least Jan. 30.
“Evan has now been unjustly imprisoned for nearly 250 days, and every day is a day too long,” the Journal said in a statement. “The accusations against him are categorically false and his continued imprisonment is a brazen and outrageous attack on a free press, which is critical for a free society.”
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The decision to extend Gershkovich’s detention was similarly criticized by the U.S. Embassy in Moscow after representatives of the embassy attended the court hearing, which took place behind closed doors. “We are deeply concerned by the court’s decision to extend his detention for another two months,” a post on the embassy’s Telegram channel read. “Evan has been in jail for almost 8 months without legal grounds. We reiterate our call for Evan's immediate release.”
The U.S. government formally declared Gershkovich “wrongfully detained” in April. He is the first U.S. journalist to be accused of spying in Russia since the end of the Cold War, though other Americans have faced criminal allegations in the country in recent years.
Former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan was convicted of espionage in 2020, and U.S.-Russian journalist Alsu Kurmasheva is currently being held in pretrial detention over an allegation that she failed to register as “foreign agent”—a crime potentially punishable by a five-year prison sentence.
