US journalist’s detention extended in Russian ‘foreign agent’ case

International News | The Hill

The detention of a Russian American journalist jailed in Russia was extended Friday by three days, The Associated Press reported.

Alsu Kurmasheva, an editor for the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, was arrested Wednesday in Kazan, Russia, on charges of failing to register as a foreign agent.

Kurmasheva arrived in Russia in May due to a family emergency, and the Russian government confiscated her passports in June. She has remained in Russia since. The maximum sentence for her charges is five years in prison.

Radio Free Europe acting President Jeffrey Gedmin said Kurmasheva “needs to be released so she can return to her family immediately.”

“Alsu is a highly respected colleague, devoted wife, and dedicated mother to two children,” Gedmin said in a statement.

Reporting from the Russian state news site Tatar-Inform alleged Kurmasheva was collecting information on Russian military activities.

Kurmasheva is the second U.S. journalist detained in Russia this year; Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was jailed in March. Gershkovich faces espionage charges, which the Journal and U.S. government officials have denounced as baseless.

Galina Arapova of Russia’s Mass Media Defense Center said the charges against Kurmasheva appear to be a form of intimidation.

“At that time, it was clear they did not have anything on her, so maybe it was like a matter of intimidation. And then it took them three months to decide how would they, you know, package the case against her,” Arapova told the AP, calling the charges a “sophisticated form of censorship.”

“She was attacked because she is a Russian journalist. Second, she belongs to a foreign media, which was already regarded as a foreign agent and with which Russian authorities had a longstanding conflict on foreign agent legislation,” she said.

The Committee to Protect Journalists called the charges against Kurmasheva “spurious,” saying her detention “is yet more proof that Russia is determined to stifle independent reporting.”