COURT ORDERS DETAINED RUSSIAN-U.S. JOURNALIST TO REMAIN IN CUSTODY
A court in Russia on Monday ordered a detained Russian-american journalist to be held in jail for two more months pending investigation and trial, in a further step in the Kremlin’s crackdown on dissent and free speech.
Alsu Kurmasheva, an editor for the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/radio Liberty’s Tatar-bashkir service, was taken into custody on Oct. 18 and charged with failing to register as a foreign agent while collecting information about the Russian military. Later, she was also charged with spreading “false information” about the Russian military. On Monday, a court in Tatarstan ordered her to remain behind bars until at least June 5.
Kurmasheva, who holds U.S. and Russian citizenship and lives in Prague with her husband and two daughters, could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted, according to RFE/RL.
She told reporters in the courtroom on Monday that she wasn’t doing “very well physically” and that some of her medical conditions have flared up in detention.
Kurmasheva was the second U.S. journalist detained in Russia last year, after Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was arrested on espionage charges in March.
Kurmasheva was stopped on June 2 at Kazan International Airport after travelling to Russia the previous month to visit her ailing elderly mother. Officials confiscated her U.S. and Russian passports and fined her for failing to register her U.S. passport. She was waiting for her passports to be returned when she was arrested on new charges in October.