Russian Court Upholds Detention of WSJ Journalist

WSJ Journalist Evan Gershkovich in Russian Court

A Moscow court on Tuesday upheld the detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was arrested while on a reporting trip last month and held on an allegation of espionage that the Journal and the U.S. government vehemently deny.

After a closed hearing, Gershkovich, a 31-year-old American citizen, was denied bail and ordered held in the Russian capital’s Lefortovo prison pending trial. Lefortovo has often been used to house prominent political prisoners.

The U.S. government has designated Mr. Gershkovich as wrongfully detained and called for his immediate release. The American ambassador, Lynne Tracy, who was allowed consular access to Mr. Gershkovich for the first time Monday, attended the hearing.

“The charges are baseless and we call on the Russian federation to immediately release”, Gershkovich, Tracy told reporters on the courthouse steps after the hearing. She also called for the release of Paul Whelan, another American being held by Russia.

Reporters and camera crews were allowed to take pictures of Mr. Gershkovich—clad in a blue plaid shirt and faded jeans—before the start of the proceedings, which were then closed to the press. It was the first time Mr. Gershkovich has been seen in public since March 30.

Ahead of the judge’s ruling, Mr. Gershkovich was shown pacing inside the dock—a transparent box used to hold defendants in Russian courts—and conferring with his lawyers.

Gershkovich was accredited to work as a journalist in Russia by the country’s Foreign Ministry at the time of his detention while reporting in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg, nearly 900 miles east of Moscow. On April 7, he was formally charged with espionage, according to Russian state news agency TASS.

Russia’s Federal Security Service, the successor to the KGB, said the journalist “acting on the instructions of the American side, collected information constituting a state secret about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex.”

A conviction in the case carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. Virtually all espionage trials in Russia end in a guilty verdict.