Russia, US journalist Evan Gershkovich sentenced to 16 years –

American Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich was sentenced to 16 years in prison for espionage after a closed-door trial that took place in record time at the Sverdlovsk Regional Court in Yekaterinburg. The first hearing was held on June 26. The prosecution had requested an 18-year sentence.

Gershkovich, 32, was arrested in Yekaterinburg, where he was working, in March last year. He was accused of having collected, on behalf of the CIA, information on the Uralvagonzavod in Nizhny Tagil, a tank factory. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had denounced the existence of “irrefutable evidence” of the journalist’s guilt, evidence that no one has ever produced and, as many have noted, never will be. Lavrov had also confirmed that negotiations were underway between the US and Russia for the exchange of prisoners. Gershkovich’s trial, which took place in just three hearings, ended with him being sentenced to 16 years in prison to be served in a maximum-security penal colony. The judge who presided over the case, Andrei Mineev, recalled in his ruling that the American journalist did not admit his guilt, “but the body of evidence presented in court was sufficient to pronounce a guilty verdict.” The Wall Street Journal called the conviction, which could pave the way for a prisoner swap between the U.S. and the United States, an exchange that until now had been conditioned by Moscow on the defendant’s conviction, a “shame.”