The Czech diplomatic service will keep fighting for the release of Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, resident in the Czech Republic, who was sent to prison in Russia, and for justice for other political prisoners, said Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky yesterday in response to a Russian court ruling sending Kurmasheva to prison for 6.5 years.
Kurmasheva was found guilty of spreading what Russian authorities called false information about the Russian military, the AP news agency reported yesterday, citing court records.
Stephen Capus, the head of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Kurmasheva’s employer, called the trial and verdict a mockery of justice. He said the only just outcome would be her immediate release. The radio station has repeatedly called for Kurmasheva’s release.
Lipavsky also called for the journalist’s release during a debate at the UN Security Council in March.
“Day after day, Russia confirms that basic human rights mean nothing to it,” Lipavsky wrote yesterday on social media, further also describing the case as a mockery of the law.
AP reported that the Russian authorities have classified the trial as secret, and no details of the charges against Kurmasheva are available. The Russian authorities and courts define false information as any information that contradicts Moscow’s official interpretation of the Russian war against the neighbouring Ukraine, now in its third year.
Kurmasheva, 47, who holds both Russian and U.S. citizenship, travelled to Russia in May last year for family reasons. In June, she was detained at the Kazan airport before her return flight, and the authorities confiscated both her U.S. and Russian passports. She then waited in Russia for her travel documents. Last October, she was charged with violating the law on foreign agents, specifically by failing to declare herself to the authorities as “a foreign agent”.
According to media reports, the Russian justice system has also accused the reporter of spreading false news about the Russian military. Specifically, Kurmasheva was probably prosecuted for a book condemning the conflict in Ukraine, entitled “Saying No to War: Forty Stories of Russians Who Opposed the Russian Invasion of Ukraine”, published in 2022, of which Kurmasheva was a co-author.
Kurmasheva lives in Prague with her husband and two daughters, and works for RFE/RL, which is funded by the U.S. Congress.
The Russian authorities previously listed the station as a foreign agent, and later designated it as an undesirable organisation. Such labels are used by the Russian authorities as a means of suppressing critics of President Vladimir Putin’s regime.
AP reports that the verdict in the Kurmasheva case came on Friday, the same day that a court in Yekaterinburg sentenced Evan Gershkovich, a US reporter for The Wall Street Journal, to 16 years in prison after finding him guilty of espionage. In response to the verdict, U.S. President Joe Biden said that Gershkovich had been convicted of being a journalist and an American. The United States continues to seek his release.
The swift and secret trials of Kurmasheva and Gershkovich have raised hopes of a possible prisoner swap between Moscow and Washington, AP noted. Moscow previously indicated that it had not ruled out a swap in the Gershkovich case, but said a verdict must be issued first. There are several U.S. citizens in Russian prisons.
