U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich will stand trial for espionage in Russia on Wednesday in a court whose proceedings are classified as a state secret.
No reporters, friends, family members or U.S. embassy staff will be allowed into the courtroom in the city of Yekaterinburg where Gershkovich, 32, faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Russian prosecutors say the Wall Street Journal reporter, arrested in March last year, had collected secret evidence about a Russian tank manufacturer on the orders of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
Gershkovich, his newspaper and the U.S. government reject the charges. U.S. President Joe Biden called his detention “totally illegal”.
Closed trials are standard procedure in Russia for cases of alleged treason or espionage involving classified state material. The Kremlin says the case, and the arrangements for it, are a matter for the court, but has stated – without publishing evidence – that Gershkovich was caught “red-handed”.
“The only people present in the court will be the judge, state prosecutor, the defendant, his lawyer and a clerk. Filming and audio recording are forbidden,” said lawyer Evgeniy Smirnov of Pervy Otdel (First Department), an association that specialises in helping defendants in such cases but is not involved in Gershkovich’s.
The nature of the proceedings imposes an additional psychological burden on the accused person, he said.
