The State Department on Monday found The Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich “wrongfully detained.” Gershkovich was arrested by Russian security services last month and is being held on espionage charges, charges that The Wall Street Journal and the U.S. government vehemently deny.
Gershkovich’s case will now be transferred to the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, a State Department arm that focuses on efforts to free hostages and others classified as improperly held in foreign countries. Detained Americans to negotiate.
The speed at which the designation was reached was unprecedented because it involved a lengthy bureaucratic process that typically took months, officials said. That determination is also rarely made until detainees are able to meet with U.S. consular officials at the local embassy, with which Gershkovich has still not been granted access.
The Journal’s editor-in-chief, Emma Tucker, said a lawyer appointed by the newspaper to represent Gershkovich recently said he was in good health and grateful for the outpouring of support from around the world.
The finding comes after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he believed there was “no doubt” Gershkovich was improperly detained by Russia, saying he had thanked his Russian counterparts in the most recent April 2 meeting. This fact was underscored in Sergei Lavrov’s call.
The Wall Street Journal has strongly denied wrongdoing by Gershkovich and called for his immediate release. The White House has described the accusation as “ridiculous,” denying that Gershkovic was a spy, saying he never worked for the U.S. government.
Blinken said last week that Gershkovich’s detention was “unacceptable” and demanded his release and that of another American, Paul J. Paul Whelan, who has been held in Russia since 2018 on espionage charges. Gershkovich’s arrest sparked international condemnation of Russia’s actions. The U.S. government also said Whelan was improperly detained. Whelan was sentenced to 16 years in exile in Russia and remains in custody. His family said the allegations were false.
The designation would mobilize other U.S. government resources to address Gershkovich’s case and expand the State Department’s powers to pressure Russia, monitor intelligence, build diplomatic alliances, exert public pressure and secure routine consular visits.
According to official U.S. State Department guidelines, “instances of wrongful detention vary, and there is no predetermined method for ensuring the safe release of persons wrongfully detained overseas.”
Moscow said Russian security services captured Gershkovich “on the spot,” but offered no evidence to support the charge or a reason for his arrest. Russia said it was acting in accordance with its own laws.
Such determinations are relatively rare: Some 99 percent of Americans held abroad face legal problems that the U.S. government has not deemed wrongful.
Under U.S. law, there are 11 criteria for determining wrongful detention, including whether the person was arrested at least in part because of his or her U.S. citizenship. According to the statistics of human rights organizations, more than 50 Americans have been improperly detained in more than a dozen countries overseas, among which Iran and China have the most cases of improper detention. The U.S. government does not disclose specific numbers of Americans who have been abducted or wrongfully detained, a State Department spokesman said, “because these numbers are constantly changing, and because of privacy considerations and the sensitivity of actions to ensure the release of all Americans.” .
The final decision to determine wrongful detention rests with the Secretary of State.
Gershkovich, 31, was arrested and charged with espionage on March 29 while reporting from Yekaterinburg, the capital of a Russian state about 800 miles east of Moscow. Gershkovich was the first American journalist to be detained by the Russian government since 1986 and one of several Americans deemed wrongfully detained by Russia in recent years.
He holds a press card issued by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and can work as a journalist in Russia.
Gershkovich is being held in Russia’s Lefortovo Prison, a pretrial detention center run by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). FSB trials are generally conducted in secret, with little or no evidence about the defendants’ cases being made public.
In December, basketball star Brittney Griner arrived in the United States by plane after being released from exile in Russia as part of a prisoner exchange for a Russian arms dealer. That prisoner exchange was facilitated in part by the Office of the President’s Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs. The U.S. State Department believes she was also wrongfully detained.
At Moscow Airport in February 2022, Gliner’s luggage was found to contain a small amount of cannabis oil. She was sentenced to nine years in penal colony for smuggling and drug possession.
U.S. officials said that in the case of Griner’s detention, the Russian government delayed allowing routine visits by U.S. consular personnel, and Griner did not see representatives of the U.S. embassy for several months.
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