(On Tuesday, Gershkovich’s lawyers were able to visit him for the first time and said that he was in good health.) Gershkovich has so far been denied access to the U.S. Defense lawyers can do little to change the outcome in Russian courts, which seem to convict virtually everyone who appears before them, but attorneys enable defendants to communicate with the outside world. Instead, Gershkovich was represented by a state-appointed attorney. Gershkovich’s lawyer was reportedly not allowed to take part or even enter the courtroom. His arrest hearing was closed to the public. It appears he’s being treated just like the Russians who have faced similar charges. Gershkovich is the first foreign journalist to be charged under the law on espionage and high treason. Human Rights Watch considers Kara-Murza the first person to have been charged with high treason for opposing the war in Ukraine. A month after Safronov was sentenced, Russian authorities filed a charge of high treason against Vladimir Kara-Murza, a journalist and politician who had originally been arrested for “discrediting the Russian armed forces,” a lesser charge. He is serving a twenty-two-year sentence. Much of his trial was closed to the public, but Russian human-rights activists and journalists believe that Safronov, who covered the Russian military, was tried and convicted for his reporting. Last September, the law was used to convict Ivan Safronov, a thirty-two-year-old Russian journalist. Another category of people accused of high treason are ordinary citizens-people without a security clearance-who told others about the movement of troops they’d witnessed during the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia and the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine. At least some of the people convicted of high treason appear to have been academics prosecuted for standard international collaboration. People charged with espionage or high treason are usually tried in closed court, and their cases are often classified, so it has been particularly difficult for human-rights activists to keep track of cases. The expansive law has been used to charge a number of Russians with high treason (the charge when acts of ostensible espionage are performed by a Russian citizen). argued that the previous version had been too restrictive and “lack of proof of ‘hostile’ intent was used by defense as an argument to release the accused and defendants from criminal responsibility.” Back when the law was changed, the F.S.B. Finally, the law doesn’t require the prosecution to prove intent. The F.S.B., the successor agency to the K.G.B., claims that Gershkovich was collecting classified information, but Russian law makes it possible to prosecute someone for espionage for using publicly available information conversely, simply obtaining information, without sharing it with anyone, can be a crime. Contrary to popular perception and common sense, in Russia, “espionage” does not need to mean working for a foreign intelligence service or even a foreign government-under the 2012 definition, espionage can include gathering information for any foreign organization the Russian government sees as threatening the security of the country. In 2012, as Vladimir Putin cracked down in the wake of mass protests, Russia broadened the definition of espionage so that reporting and other professional activities could be interpreted as spying. Under Russian law, it may indeed be evidence. Ordinary journalistic activity-indeed, the ordinary details of a young American man’s life-are recast as evidence of espionage. He travelled to Tallinn in 2019, ostensibly to write a story on Estonian politics-“Was he meeting his handlers from the Center? We’ll see what investigators have to say about this.” He has a Web site on which he lists publications he has written for but no biographical details-“Did he have something to hide?” the article asks. He advanced in his career suspiciously fast. He played soccer in high school and college, which suggested that he is physically fit, which, in turn, made him a desirable recruit for a spy outlet. somewhere in Asia-this must have been a cover for an intelligence organization. In the year after college, he worked for an environmental N.G.O. At Bowdoin, he majored in philosophy, not journalism-this, the newspaper implied, meant that he is not a real journalist. Another article was titled “An Ideal American Spy: What Doesn’t Add Up in the Career of Evan Gershkovich.” This piece listed facts about Gershkovich, making each appear sinister or at least suspicious. “The FSB Has Nabbed a Wall Street Journal Reporter: He was Collecting Information on Russian Military Industry,” one headline proclaimed. In the course of a few days, Komsomolskaya Pravda, one of the most widely read newspapers in Russia, published no fewer than two dozen items on Evan Gershkovich, the American journalist being held in Moscow on charges of espionage.
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