Arrested on trip to mother
Moscow locks up Radio Liberty journalist for even longer
April 1, 2024, 5:29 p.m
Listen to article
This audio version was artificially generated. More info | Send feedback
Last May, a US-Russian journalist from Radio Liberty wanted to visit her sick mother. But in Russia she is arrested for allegedly spreading “false information.” Now her sentence is being extended again and she faces many more years behind bars.
A Russian court has extended the detention of US-Russian journalist Alsu Kurmasheva until June 5th. At the hearing in Kazan, capital of the Republic of Tartastan, Kurmasheva appeared smiling but complained about the poor condition of her prison cell. The reporter for the US broadcasting group Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was arrested last year because she had not registered as a “foreign agent”.
According to the broadcaster, she was also charged with spreading “false information,” which is punishable by 15 years in prison. “The allegations made against Alsu are unfounded,” said a spokesman for the RFE/RL broadcasting group. It was “not a legitimate procedure, but a political ploy,” he emphasized.
The journalist, who lives in Prague with her husband and two daughters, traveled to Russia on May 20 to visit her sick mother. Since both her passports were confiscated, she was unable to leave again. Kurmasheva joined Radio Free Europe in 1998, works in the Tatar and Bashkir languages and reports on ethnic minorities in the Tatarstan and Bashkortostan regions.
According to Russian media, the charges brought against Kurmasheva for spreading “false information” stemmed from her collaboration on a book containing reports by Russians opposed to the offensive in Ukraine. Civil rights groups say it is another step in Russia’s campaign against independent media, which has intensified since Russia’s offensive in Ukraine in February 2022.
Washington accuses Moscow of unjustifiably detaining US citizens in order to exchange them for Russians imprisoned in the West. US journalist Evan Gershkovich was arrested in March 2023 and has since been held in Moscow on espionage charges. His pre-trial detention was recently extended until June 30.