Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva was arrested in the Russian city of Kazan, her employer Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) announced on Wednesday October 18. She was charged for not having declared herself “as a foreign agent”a charge for which she faces up to five years in prison, specifies this private media financed by the American Congress in a press release.
The journalist, who usually lives in Prague with her husband and children, had to go to Russia for a “family emergency” on May 20, then was temporarily arrested on June 2 before her return flight to Kazan, explains RFE/RL. Her American and Russian passports confiscated, she found herself unable to leave Russia, before her indictment was finally announced on Wednesday.
In a statement, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said the journalist was in a temporary detention center on Wednesday evening, according to information from the official Tatar-Inform news agency.
“Journalism is not a crime”
Authorities accuse Alsu Kurmasheva of “deliberately conducted collection of military information on Russian activities via the Internet in order to transmit this information to foreign sources” in September 2022 as well as having “carried out information campaigns discrediting Russia”specifies Tatar-Inform.
CPJ calls on Russia to “release immediately” the journalist and “drop all charges” against him. “Journalism is not a crime, and Kurmasheva’s detention is further proof of Russia’s determination to stifle independent journalism”declares the organization in a press release.
According to RFE/RL, Alsu “Kurmasheva is a seasoned journalist who has long covered the ethnic minorities of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, in the Volga and Ural region of Russia”. “She must be released so she can return to her family immediately”added the interim president of RFE/RL, Jeffrey Gedmin.
Procedure classified secret
Alsu Kurmasheva is the second American journalist to be arrested in Russia in 2023, after Evan Gershkovich. This journalist at Wall Street Journal was arrested by Russian security services during a report in Yekaterinburg, in the Urals, on March 29. He has since been detained in Lefortovo prison in Moscow.
Evan Gershkovich, who also worked for Agence France-Presse in Moscow in the past, is accused of espionage, a crime punishable by twenty years in prison, but he rejects these accusations, as do Washington, his newspaper, his relatives and his family. Russia has never substantiated its accusations or publicly provided evidence, and the entire procedure has been classified secret. No date for his trial has been set at this time. Last week, a Moscow court rejected the journalist’s appeal against the extension of his pre-trial detention.
In recent years, several American citizens have been arrested and sentenced to heavy sentences in Russia, with Washington accusing Moscow of wanting to exchange them for Russians detained in the United States.