WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich sentenced to 16 years for espionage by Russian court

(AP) Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has been convicted of espionage and sentenced to 16 years in prison. He, his employer and the U.S. government say all the charges against him are fabricated. The 32-year-old journalist appeared after the verdict in court in Yekaterinburg on Friday in a glass defendants’ cage, his head shaved. The trial was held behind closed doors in the country’s highly politicized legal system. Gershkovich is the first Western journalist arrested on espionage charges in post-Soviet Russia. Russian authorities claimed without presenting evidence that he was gathering secret information for the U.S. The State Department has declared him “wrongfully detained.”

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