FILE - Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich stands in a glass cage in a courtroom at the Moscow City Court, in Moscow, Russia, on Dec. 14, 2023. An estimated 320 journalists around the world were imprisoned because of their work toward the end of 2023. That's from the Committee to Protect Journalists, which on Thursday, Jan. 18, 2024 issued its annual census as of Dec. 1, 2023. (AP Photo/Dmitry Serebryakov, file)
MOSCOW (AP) – Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter who was detained on espionage charges, lost an appeal Friday against his arrest, Russian state news agencies reported. That means he will stay in jail until the end of March.
A 32-year-old United States citizen, Gershkovich was arrested in the city of Yekaterinburg while on a reporting trip to Russia in late March 2023. He and his employer deny the allegations, and the U.S. government has declared him to be wrongfully detained.
Russian authorities have not provided any evidence to support the espionage charges.
Gershkovich is the first American reporter to to face espionage charges in Russia since September 1986, when Nicholas Daniloff, a Moscow correspondent for U.S. News and World Report, was arrested by the KGB.
