▲ Alsu Kurmasheva, editor of the Tatar-Bashkir service of the US government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, during a court hearing in Kazan.Photo Ap
Juan Pablo Duch
Correspondent
The newspaper La Jornada
Tuesday, July 23, 2024, p. 27
Moscow. A court in Tatarstan, a Muslim-majority republic that is part of the Russian Federation, sentenced journalist Alsu Kurmasheva to six and a half years in prison in the city of Kazan for spreading fake news The Supreme Court of Tatarstan has published a statement on the Internet about the involvement of the Russian army in Russia’s military operation in Ukraine.
The spokeswoman for the court, Natalia Losieva, confirmed to AP yesterday that the verdict was handed down in a closed-door trial on Friday and said that Kurmasheva, 47, a citizen of both Russia and the United States, will have to serve her sentence in a medium-security detention center.
The sentencing of Kurmasheva, editor of the Tatarstan and Bashkiria (another Muslim-majority republic in central Russia) service of the US-funded Radio Liberty broadcaster, came on the same day as that of the US correspondent for the daily The Wall Street JournalEvan Gershkovich, sentenced in the city of Yekaterinburg to 16 years in prison for espionage and links them to the US Central Intelligence Agency, according to the Sverdlovsk regional court.
The Tatar-Inform news portal claims that Russian authorities have accused Kurmasheva of coordinating the preparation of the book. No to war: Testimonies of 40 Russians who oppose the invasion of Ukrainewhich the broadcaster’s service for Tatarstan and Bashkiria published in the fall of 2022.
Judicial ambush
Originally from Kazan, Kurmasheva has lived in Prague with her husband and two daughters since 1998, but travelled to Tatarstan to care for her seriously ill mother. On the day she was due to return to the Czech Republic, on 2 June 2023, police stopped Kurmasheva at the international airport in the Tatar capital and took away both of her passports, preventing her from boarding a plane.
The authorities opened a criminal case against her for failing to disclose that she had a second nationality, and in October of that year, a court found her guilty of breaking the law and fined her 10,000 rubles, equivalent to about 2,000 pesos.
A week later, authorities arrested Kurmasheva again for failing to voluntarily register as a foreign agent and ruled that she should be held in pretrial detention awaiting trial, but a month and a half later, on December 11, 2023, they filed charges against her for spreading fake news on the military, an accusation that carries more severe penalties.
There are indications that the Kremlin and the White House are still negotiating a possible prisoner exchange, which could include journalists Kurmasheva and Gershkovich.