A courtroom spokesperson stated that the courtroom’s examination of the proof within the case had concluded on the second day of the trial, with arguments from the protection and prosecution due on Friday, the Interfax information company reported.
The method was remarkably swift for an espionage trial, which frequently run to many months in Russia. Native Yekaterinburg outlet It’s My Metropolis reported that the prosecution would make its sentencing request on Friday, suggesting an inevitable responsible verdict may observe rapidly.
“We now have obtained irrefutable proof corroborating that Gershkovich was concerned in some espionage actions,” Lavrov stated Wednesday at a information convention on the United Nations in New York, the place Russia is at present chairing the Safety Council.
Gershkovich, the Wall Road Journal, and the Biden administration have vehemently denied that there’s any foundation to Russia’s allegations and that he has primarily been taken hostage. Russia beforehand has arrested People, similar to WNBA star Brittney Griner, on what seem like minor expenses, after which used them as bargaining chips to win the discharge of Russians imprisoned for severe crimes within the West.
The trial this week on the Sverdlovsk Regional Court docket in Yekaterinburg was moved up from Aug. 13 on the request of Gershkovich’s protection workforce, in line with the courtroom. The primary listening to was held late final month.
A swift completion of the trial may open the way in which for motion on a prisoner alternate. Lavrov on Wednesday confirmed that negotiations over an alternate for Gershkovich have been underway, after Russian officers beforehand have stated no commerce can be doable till after his trial is full. Greater than 99 % of Russian legal prosecutions lead to convictions.
“The intelligence providers of the 2 international locations … have been concerned in contacts wanting into the potential of an alternate,” Lavrov stated. “Everybody is aware of that this subject must be mentioned calmly, confidentially despite the fact that it’s always launched into the general public area by American journalists, which isn’t serving to. However the contacts are ongoing.”
Lavrov’s assertion of “irrefutable proof” — whereas not offering any — echoed the remarks of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov who claimed after Gershkovich’s arrest final yr that he had been “caught red-handed.”
Gershkovich, 32, who was accredited by Russia’s International Ministry, was detained in March 2023 on a reporting journey to Yekaterinburg and accused of espionage. He has pleaded not responsible.
Russian prosecutors allege that the journalist was working on the orders of the CIA, gathering secret details about Uralvagonzavod, a state-owned machine-building manufacturing unit in Nizhny Tagil, about 87 miles southeast of Yekaterinburg. The manufacturing unit manufactures tanks for Russia’s warfare on Ukraine.
The listening to was closed, as is customary in Russian trials in circumstances of espionage or treason, which means that the character of the proof introduced by prosecutors in opposition to Gershkovich most likely won’t ever be publicly identified. Gershkovich faces a jail time period of as much as 20 years if convicted.
Vyacheslav Vegner, a member of the Sverdlovsk area’s Legislative Meeting, appeared as a witness within the case on Thursday and was questioned by either side, he informed Interfax information company, which supplied no particulars on what he stated or whether or not he was a prosecution or protection witness. He stated he had spoken to Gershkovich through the journalist’s reporting journey to Yekaterinburg.
Russian media outlet SOTAvision quoted Vegner saying that Gershkovich requested him if the profile of the military-industrial crops in Yekaterinburg was altering, what number of shifts they labored and whether or not there was enough personnel.
The U.S. Embassy in Moscow stated final month that the case in opposition to Gershkovich was “not about proof, procedural norms, or the rule of regulation. It’s in regards to the Kremlin utilizing Americans to realize its political goals.”
On the U.N., Lavrov stated: “The usage of journalists for intelligence-gathering functions, a minimum of within the Anglo-Saxon world, is a convention.”
Earlier than Gershkovich’s trial opened in Yekaterinburg on June 26, Wall Road Journal editor in chief Emma Tucker described the costs as baseless, saying they’d “inevitably result in a bogus conviction for an harmless man.”
Former president Donald Trump has acknowledged that he would use his private relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin to have Gershkovich freed shortly after the November U.S. election, by which he expects to be elected president.
Gershkovich’s arrest, in addition to these of a number of different People, has raised the specter of a renewal of “hostage diplomacy,” when nations arrest harmless residents to be used in exchanges or to ship pointed political messages.
One other American jailed for spying, former U.S. Marine and company safety govt Paul Whelan, 54, has spent greater than 5½ years behind bars in Russia, having been handed over in two earlier prisoner alternate offers with Russia.
These occurred when Griner, convicted in Moscow of drug possession in August 2022, was freed in an alternate that December for the Russian arms supplier Viktor Bout, and former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed, convicted of assaulting a police officer, was freed in April 2022 in alternate for Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who was jailed in the US for drug smuggling.
The State Division has declared each Gershkovich and Whelan to be unlawfully detained by Russia, elevating the efforts to free them. When the trial began, Peskov stated that the costs in opposition to Gershkovich resonated in the US, “however it’s not so resonant in our nation.”
Russia has additionally arrested a Russian American journalist, Alsu Kurmasheva, an editor at U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty based mostly in Prague and charged her with failing to register as a international agent and spreading faux information in regards to the Russia-Ukraine warfare. Kurmasheva and RFE/RL reject the costs as false.
In February, a courtroom in Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Area, within the Far East, convicted German journalist Björn Blaschke from radio broadcaster Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), on expenses of discrediting the Russian navy, over a social media put up in 2022. Blaschke left the nation after being fined and launched from custody.
Russia’s Heart for Combating Extremism for the Jewish Autonomous Area mounted the costs over a put up by Blaschke on X on Aug. 2, 2022, in German, which acknowledged: “Russia’s assault on Ukraine exacerbates the state of affairs: rising world costs for wheat and gasoline additionally affected Kenya, Ethiopia, and South Sudan.”
Blaschke pleaded not responsible and testified that the put up was a quote from a Kenyan man, posted throughout a reporting journey to the east African nation.
Russian Federal Safety Service brokers routinely search the telephones of international journalists touring to Russia.
A Moscow courtroom on Thursday sentenced American musician Michael Travis Leake to 13 years in a strict regime penal colony after convicting him of tried drug trafficking. Leake was the lead vocalist for a Moscow-based band, Lovi Noch, and produced music for Russian bands.
He was arrested in June 2023 and accused of organizing the gross sales of medication to younger folks; he has denied the costs.
