Journalist Evan Gershkovich files an appeal against his pretrial detention in Russia

3 Apr. (EUROPE PRESS) –

The American journalist Evan Gershkovich, who works for the newspaper ‘The Wall Street Journal’ and who was arrested last Thursday in Russia for an alleged crime related to espionage, has filed an appeal against his preventive detention.

“The court received a complaint from Gershkovich’s defense against the choice of a preventive measure in the form of detention,” the Moscow court has ruled, which has not given details about the possible hearing to deal with his case, the news agency reported. TASS news.

The Moscow court ordered last Thursday that the journalist remain in pretrial detention until at least May 29, in a first appearance in which he confirmed the charge of espionage advanced by the Federal Security Service (FSB).

The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, had a telephone conversation the day before with the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, in which the American called for the “immediate release” of the journalist, as well as that of ex-marine Paul Whelan.

Russian authorities detained Gershkovich in the city of Yekaterinburg. The journalist faces a possible sentence of up to 20 years in prison for being suspected of “acting on orders from the United States to collect information that constitutes state secrets about the activities of one of the companies of the Russian military-industrial complex.”

Specifically, he would have been gathering information about the Wagner Group, owned by the oligarch Yevgeni Prigozhin, close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and who has sent mercenaries to Ukraine. Gershkovich’s last article published by ‘The Wall Street Journal’ dates from March 28 under the headline ‘Russia’s economy is beginning to unravel’.

Gershkovich previously worked for the French news agency AFP and the Russian newspaper ‘The Moscow Times’. Likewise, he has published in ‘The New York Times’, ‘The Economist’, ‘MIT Technology Review’, ‘Foreign Policy’ and Politico Europe, among other media, according to his website.