US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday that he had “no doubt” that Russia had wrongfully detained the US Wall Street Journal reporter who was arrested last week for espionage.
Blinken added that the formal determination of Evan Gershkovich’s wrongful detention has not yet been made, but the legal process will be concluded soon.
“In Evan’s case, we are working to establish a wrongful arrest.”said Antony Blinken. “In my opinion there is no doubt that he is unjustly detained by Russia”he stressed.
Blinken’s remarks at NATO headquarters in Brussels came days after he urged his Russian counterpart, Serguei Lavrov, to release Gershkovich immediately.
When the US government formally declares a citizen wrongfully detained, the case is turned over to the Office of the Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs, which works on release negotiations.
Gershkovich, 31, was arrested on March 29 in the city of Yekaterinburg, the capital of the Urals, by Federal Security Service (FSB, formerly KGB) agents.
He was charged with espionage on behalf of the United States, making him the first American journalist to be prosecuted for espionage since the Cold War.
Gershkovich has been the Wall Street Journal’s correspondent for Russia, Ukraine and the former Soviet republics since January 2022.
Before Gershkovich, in 1986, Nicholas Daniloff was the last American journalist charged with espionage, replaced three weeks later by a Soviet citizen imprisoned in the United States.
Source: DN
