By The Guardian (World News) | Created at 2024-09-27 16:05:15 | Updated at 2024-10-05 01:32:42
1 week ago
The Russian judge who convicted the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has said the trial was short because it did not examine any “material evidence” and the verdict did not take long because he could “type quickly”.
“The case itself was small. I don’t remember how many folders there were – three or five,” said Andrei Mineyev, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.
“Why did it go so quickly? The point is the court did not examine material evidence,” Mineyev said, adding that this was because neither the prosecution nor the defence had requested it.
Mineyev made the comments at a conference in the city of Yekaterinburg, where he spoke about different cases he had worked on, according to Russian media.
Gershkovich was arrested in March 2023 while on a reporting trip to Ekaterinburg. He became the first foreign journalist held for espionage in post-Soviet Russia.
Gershkovich, his employer and the United States have always denied the accusation.
His trial in Ekaterinburg, which was widely described as a sham, began in June 2024.
Prosecutors accused Gershkovich, 32, whose parents emigrated from the Soviet Union, of gathering secret information about the activities of a big tank factory in the region.
The trial was held behind closed doors, which is common in espionage cases, and concluded with unusual haste.
On 19 July 19 he was sentenced to 16 years in prison. Two weeks later he was released in the biggest prisoner swap between Russia and the west since the cold war.
The judge said he was “100-200%” sure that Gershkovich was “at the same time a journalist, a spy and a CIA agent”, the Russian newspaper Kommersant reported.
The judge said he retired to consider the verdict at midday and pronounced it at 5pm, saying the quick turnaround was because he could “type quickly”, the paper said.
