A Moscow court rejected the appeal on Thursday of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who is being held in a high-security prison in Russia on spying charges.
The journalist, whom U.S. officials insist is innocent, had appealed a previous judicial ruling extending his pretrial detention until Aug. 30. It is the third time his appeals against detention have been dismissed.
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Gershkovich’s parents, Ella Milman and Mikhail Gershkovich, were in attendance at the Lefortovsky District Court of the Moscow proceeding, as was U.S. ambassador to Russia, Lynne Tracy.
“This was a procedural hearing, appealing the conditions of his continued detention and we were extremely disappointed by the denial of his appeal,” Tracy said, according to CNN, adding that she “could not speak with Evan directly at the courthouse today.”
“Failing to comply with its obligations under the consular convention enforced between our two countries, Russia has denied the US embassy’s requests for formal consular access on three occasions since I last visited Evan in April,” she said.
The Wall Street Journal called the court’s ruling “no less than an outrage” and added, “We continue to demand his immediate release.”
In late March, Russian authorities detained him on espionage charges on a reporting trip in Yekaterinburg. Shortly thereafter, the Biden administration determined Gershkovich is being wrongfully detained, a legal definition decided by the State Department.
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Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in May the department is “intensely engaged” in trying to secure Gershkovich’s freedom, though he added, “I wish I could say that, in this moment, there was a clear way forward. We don’t have that in this moment, but it’s something that we’re working on every single day.”
Gershkovich’s arrest in March was the first detention of an American reporter in Russia on allegations of spying since the Cold War, further straining already tense relations between Moscow and Washington.
