The Russian judge who sentenced American journalist Evan Gershkovich to 16 years in prison for “espionage”, since released in a prisoner exchange, admitted not having examined “material evidence” during the trial, reported Friday the state agency Ria Novosti.
The reporter, his media Wall Street Journalhis relatives and the United States have always refuted this accusation of espionage, which Russia has never substantiated.
Arrested in March 2023 while he was reporting in the Urals, Evan Gershkovich was convicted in July after a speedy trial behind closed doors.
Embarrassing, “apparently”
The judge responsible for the case, Andrei Mineyev, explained the speed of the process by the absence of “material evidence” presented to the court, according to the Ria Novosti agency.
“The reason why [l’affaire] was examined so quickly is that the material evidence was not directly examined by the court,” he said during a public lecture at the history museum in Yekaterinburg, the city where Evan Gershkovich was arrested then condemned.
None of the parties had requested that this “evidence” be presented during the trial, according to him.
The file was also “not very big” and included only “two witnesses”, declared Andreï Mineyev.
The judge, who announced the conviction after only a few hours of deliberations, noted that it was one of his “quickest verdicts”, which he said was “apparently embarrassing”. .
Andrei Mineyev also explained this speed by the fact that he “types quickly” on a computer keyboard.
Prisoner exchange
Evan Gershkovich was released on 1er August as part of the largest prisoner exchange between Moscow and the West since the end of the Cold War.
Andrei Mineyev nevertheless assured that he had “no prior information” about the exchange and had not been subjected to any pressure, according to the newspaper Kommersantalso present at the conference.
“The initiative to examine the case more quickly came from the defense. They must have known something,” he said.
Evan Gershkovich “did not admit his guilt” during the trial, the judge said, although he was certain that he was “at the same time a journalist, a spy and a CIA agent”.
Andrei Mineyev was also responsible for the case of Ksenia Karelina, a Russian-American citizen whom he sentenced to 12 years in prison for “treason” for making a donation to an organization helping Ukraine.
M’s verdictme Karelina fell two weeks after the prisoner exchange involving Evan Gershkovich.
The United States accuses Moscow of specifically seeking to imprison Americans in Russia in order to recover, in exchange, Russians detained in Western countries.