KAZAN, RUSSIA (Reuters) – A court in Kazan, Russia, has extended the pretrial detention of Russian-American journalist Alsou Kurmacheva, accused of violating Russia’s “foreign agents” law, until December 5.
Russian authorities believe that the journalist, based in Prague and working for the US-funded radio station Radio Liberté, did not register as a “foreign agent”.
The journalist’s lawyer, Edgar Matevosyan, told Reuters he considered the Kazan court’s decision to extend pre-trial detention as “too harsh” and intended to appeal. The journalist is expected to be placed in a pre-trial detention center in Kazan, about 700 km east of Moscow.
“We are deeply disappointed by the outcome of today’s hearing. We demand the immediate release of Alsou so that she can reunite with her family,” said the president of Radio Liberté, Jeffrey Gedmin, in a press release published after the court decision.
Alsou Kurmacheva is the second American journalist to be arrested and charged in Russia since the start of the war in Ukraine, which has plunged relations between Moscow and Washington to their lowest level in more than 60 years.
After the arrest in March of Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich on espionage charges, which he denies, almost all other American journalists left Russia.
The US State Department said last week that the prosecution of Alsou Kurmacheva appeared to be “another case of harassment of US citizens by the Russian government.” The Kremlin denied the comments and called them inappropriate.
Alsou Kourmacheva, who has American and Russian passports, entered Russia on May 20 for a family emergency, according to her employer. While waiting for her return flight on June 2, she was arrested and her passports were confiscated.
The journalist was fined for failing to register her US passport with Russian authorities and was indicted last week for failing to register as a foreign agent, a misdemeanor punishable by up to five years in prison.
The term “foreign agent,” which has connotations of Cold War espionage, has been applied in Russia to organizations, journalists, human rights activists and even artists. It comes with close government oversight and a mountain of red tape.
(Report by Filipp Lebedev, French version by Gaëlle Sheehan, edited by Kate Entringer)
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