A court has convicted Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist for the US government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, of spreading false information about the Russian army and sentenced her to 6½ years in prison after a secret trial, court records and officials said Monday.
Kurmasheva’s family, her employer and the US government have rejected the charges against her and have called for her release.
The conviction in Kazan, the capital of Russia’s central region of Tatarstan, came on Friday, the same day a court in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg convicted Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich of espionage and sentenced him to 16 years in prison in a case that the US called politically motivated.
Kurmasheva, a 47-year-old editor for RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir language service, was convicted of “spreading false information” about the military after a trial that lasted just two days, according to the website of the Supreme Court of Tatarstan. Court spokesperson Natalya Loseva confirmed Kurmasheva’s conviction and revealed the sentence to The Associated Press by phone in the case classified as secret.
Kurmasheva was ordered to serve the sentence in a medium-security penal colony, Loseva said.
“My daughters and I know Alsu has done nothing wrong. And the world knows it too. We need her home,” Kurmasheva’s husband, Pavel Butorin, said in a post Monday on X.
He had said last year the charges stemmed from a book the Tatar-Bashkir service released in 2022 called “No to War” — “a collection of short stories of Russians who don’t want their country to be at war with Ukraine.” Butorin had said the book doesn’t contain any “false information.”
Matthew Miller, the US State Department spokesman, said Kurmasheva is being “targeted by Russian authorities for her uncompromising commitment to speaking the truth and her principled reporting.”
“We continue to make very clear that she should be released,” Miller added.
Asked about the case, RFE/RL President and CEO Stephen Capus denounced the trial and conviction of Kurmasheva as “a mockery of justice.” “The only just outcome is for Alsu to be immediately released from prison by her Russian captors,” he said in a statement to the AP.
“It’s beyond time for this American citizen, our dear colleague, to be reunited with her loving family,” Capus said.
Kurmasheva, who holds US and Russian citizenship and lives in Prague with her husband and two daughters, was taken into custody in October 2023 and charged with failing to register as a foreign agent while collecting information about the Russian military.
Later, she was also charged with spreading “false information” about the Russian military under legislation that effectively criminalized any public expression about the war in Ukraine that deviates from the Kremlin line. The legislation was adopted in March 2022, just days after the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine, and has since been used to target Kremlin critics at home and abroad, implicating scores of people in criminal cases and sending dozens to prison.
Kurmasheva was initially stopped in June 2023 at Kazan International Airport after traveling to Russia the previous month to visit her ailing elderly mother. Officials confiscated her US and Russian passports and fined her for failing to register her US passport. She was waiting for her passports to be returned when she was arrested on new charges in October that year. RFE/RL has repeatedly called for her release.
RFE/RL was told by Russian authorities in 2017 to register as a foreign agent, but it has challenged Moscow’s use of foreign agent laws in the European Court of Human Rights. The organization has been fined millions of dollars by Russia.
The organization Reporters Without Borders said Kurmasheva’s conviction “illustrates the unprecedented level of despotism permeating a Russian judiciary that takes orders from the Kremlin.”
It called for Kurmasheva’s immediate release and said the purpose of the sentence was to dissuade journalists from traveling to Russia and put pressure on the United States.
In February, RFE/RL was outlawed in Russia as an undesirable organization. Its Tatar-Bashkir service is the only major international news provider reporting in those languages, in addition to Russian, to audiences in the multi-ethnic, Muslim-majority Volga-Urals region.
The swift and secretive trials of Kurmasheva and Gershkovich in Russia’s highly politicized legal system raised hopes for a possible prisoner swap between Moscow and Washington. Russia has previously signaled a possible exchange involving Gershkovich, but said a verdict in his case must come first.
Arrests of Americans are increasingly common in Russia, with nine US citizens known to be detained there as tensions between the two countries have escalated over fighting in Ukraine.
Gershkovich, 32, was arrested March 29, 2023, while on a reporting trip to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg. Authorities claimed, without offering any evidence, that he was gathering secret information for the US
He has been behind bars since his arrest, time that will be counted as part of his sentence. Most of that was in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo Prison — a czarist-era lockup used during Josef Stalin’s purges, when executions were carried out in its basement. He was transferred to Yekaterinburg for the trial.
Gershkovich was the first US journalist arrested on espionage charges since Nicholas Daniloff in 1986, at the height of the Cold War. Foreign journalists in Russia were shocked by Gershkovich’s arrest, even though the country has enacted increasingly repressive laws on freedom of speech after sending troops into Ukraine.
US President Joe Biden said after his conviction that Gershkovich “was targeted by the Russian government because he is a journalist and an American.”
US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield accused Moscow last week of treating “human beings as bargaining chips.” She singled out Gershkovich and ex-Marine Paul Whelan, 53, a corporate security director from Michigan, who is serving a 16-year sentence after being convicted on spying charges that he and the US denied.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday that when it comes to Gershkovich, Whelan and other Americans wrongfully detained in Russia and elsewhere, the US is working on the cases “quite literally every day.”
Sam Greene of the Center for European Policy Analysis said the conviction and sentencing of Kurmasheva and Gershkovich on the same day “suggests — but does not prove — that the Kremlin is preparing a deal. More likely, they are preparing to offer up a negotiating table that Washington will find it difficult to ignore.”
In a series of posts on X, Greene stressed that “the availability of a negotiating table shouldn’t be confused with the availability of a deal,” and that Moscow has no interest in releasing its prisoners — but it is likely to “seek the highest possible price for its bargaining chips, and to seek additional concessions along the way just to keep the talks going.”
Washington “should obviously do what it can” to get Gershkovich, Kurmasheva, imprisoned opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza and other political prisoners out, he said, adding: “But if Moscow demands what it really wants — the abandonment of Ukraine — what then?”
US-Russian journalist convicted in a rapid, secret trial, gets 6 1/2 years in prison, court says
https://arab.news/63ebf
US-Russian journalist convicted in a rapid, secret trial, gets 6 1/2 years in prison, court says
- The swift and secretive trials of Kurmasheva and Gershkovich in Russia’s highly politicized legal system raised hopes for a possible prisoner swap between Moscow and Washington
‘No longer afraid’: Journalists drop pseudonyms as Syrians reclaim voices after Assad’s fall
- Many Syrian journalists resorted to false names for fear of reprisals
- ‘Using a fake name was to many Syrians part of suppressing their identity,’ London-based Zouhir Masri tells Arab News
LONDON: Syrian journalists, long silenced in the shadow of the oppressive regime of Bashar Assad, are beginning to shed their pseudonyms and reclaim their real names in a symbolic act of liberation following the tyrant’s fall.
During Syria’s descent into chaos in 2012, many journalists and activists adopted pseudonyms to protect themselves and their families from the regime’s brutal retaliation. For years, speaking out meant risking persecution, imprisonment, or worse.
Zouhir Masri, a London-based journalist formerly known as Zouhir Al-Shimale, said: “In the past, activists and journalists used to use pseudonyms to cover their identity for safety reasons since most of them, including me, had their family members stuck in Syria and unable to leave.”
Masri explained to Arab News: “Now that Syria is free, lots of people have started to use their real names which were suppressed and kept hidden out of fear of retaliation from the Assad regime’s security forces.”
Masri, who fled his home in Aleppo in 2018 after the regime’s chemical attacks, is one of many journalists now revealing their true identities.
Prominent figures such as Malath Assaf, director of programs for the unofficially rebel-affiliated Aleppo Today, and Rami Jarrah, previously known by the pseudonym Alexander Page, are now openly discussing Syria’s future without fear of reprisal.
One journalist, Manal Al-Sahwi, who investigated Syria’s illicit Captagon trade and its links to the Assad family, shared her story on Facebook earlier this month.
She wrote: “For years, I wrote more than 150 articles in addition to my daily work on the Daraj website. I thought my name would be hidden forever. I worked on dozens of investigations, human rights reports, blogs and opinion articles, believing the truth must be told, even if we remain in the shadows.”
Revealing she had used the pseudonym Carmen Karim, she added: “I only hope that I will never return to writing under a pseudonym again.”
The Syrian Network for Human Rights has reported that at least 717 journalists and media workers were killed between March 2011 and May 2024, while 1,358 were arrested or kidnapped.
Even those who fled abroad often lived under the looming fear of the regime’s long reach.
“It is well known that the regime did not only target individuals but also relatives. Therefore, we could never work under our real names. Personally, I didn’t have the courage to do it,” Assaf said in a recent interview.
However, it was not only journalists who had been silenced in Assad’s regime.
For years many ordinary citizens resorted to pseudonyms when sharing their stories with the media, fearing the regime’s ruthless reprisals.
Now, following Assad’s fall, they are walking the streets of Damascus with a renewed sense of freedom and reclaiming their right to express themselves openly.
“Finally, I am no longer afraid to express my opinion. I was scared to speak about anything related to the country, even if it wasn’t related to politics. This was the case of every Syrian living in the republic of fear,” said Shifaa Sawan, previously known as Suham Al-Ali, a teacher in Damascus, in an interview with Berlin-based Syria Direct.
“The sunrise was different that first day. It was not like the days before the regime fell. I walked through Bab Touma, Al-Qaymariya, Al-Maliki and Umayyad Square. I went to the Presidential Palace, repeating (Abdul Baset) Al-Sarout’s song ‘Janna Janna Janna, Ghali ya Watanna’.”
As the world watches to learn what the future holds for Syria and its people, the fall of Assad’s regime has brought a renewed sense of hope. Citizens are reclaiming their identities, removing their metaphorical gags, and shouting their long-suppressed voices.
“Using a fake name was to many Syrians part of suppressing their identity and who they really are as (a) Syrian,” said Masri. “Now this is no longer the case.”
Facebook restricts war-related content in Palestinian territories, BBC investigation claims
- Local news outlets report 77% drop in audience engagement
- ‘Any implication that we deliberately suppress a particular voice is unequivocally false,’ Meta says
LONDON: A BBC investigation has claimed that Facebook significantly restricted access to news in Palestinian territories, limiting local news outlets’ ability to reach audiences during the ongoing Israel-Gaza war.
Research conducted by the BBC Arabic team found that 20 newsrooms in Gaza and the West Bank reported a 77 percent decline in audience engagement — a measure of the visibility and impact of social media content — following the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023.
In contrast, Facebook pages belonging to 20 Israeli news outlets, including Yediot Ahronot, Israel Hayom and Channel 13, saw a 37 percent increase in engagement for similar war-related content during the same period.
“Interaction was completely restricted and our posts stopped reaching people,” said Tariq Ziad, a journalist at Palestine TV, which experienced a 60 percent drop in engagement despite having 5.8 million Facebook followers.
With international journalists restricted from accessing Gaza due to Israeli-imposed limitations, local media and social platforms have become critical sources of information around the world. But the disparity in engagement has underscored concerns about a growing “war of narratives” on social media.
Facebook’s parent company, Meta, has previously faced allegations of “shadow banning” Palestinian content. Critics, including human rights groups, claim the platform fails to moderate online activity fairly.
According to an independent report commissioned by Meta in 2021, the company said the loss of engagement was never deliberate, attributing it to a “lack of Arabic-speaking expertise among moderators,” which led to some Arabic phrases being inadvertently flagged as harmful or sensitive.
To test these claims, the BBC analyzed 30 prominent Facebook pages from Arabic news outlets and found an almost 100 percent increase in engagement.
Meta admitted to increasing moderation of Palestinian user comments in response to a “spike in hateful content” but rejected allegations of bias.
A spokesperson told the BBC: “Any implication that we deliberately suppress a particular voice is unequivocally false.”
However, internal communications reviewed by the BBC showed that Meta-owned Instagram’s algorithm had been adjusted shortly after the conflict began, with at least one engineer raising concerns about potential new bias against Palestinian users.
“Within a week of the Hamas attack, the code was changed essentially making it more aggressive toward Palestinian people,” the engineer told the BBC.
Although Meta said these policy changes were reversed, it did not specify when.
A similar investigation by Arab News revealed widespread reports of pro-Palestinian posts and accounts being suspended or banned during Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 144 media workers have been killed since the start of the conflict, 133 of whom were Palestinians, making it the deadliest conflict for journalists in recent history.
Two men arrested in London over attack on British-Iranian journalist
- Iran International journalist Pouria Zeraati was stabbed outside his home in March in what investigators have identified as a Tehran-orchestrated plot
LONDON: British police said on Tuesday they arrested two Romanian men over the stabbing of a journalist working for a Persian language media organisation in London in March.
Pouria Zeraati, a British-Iranian journalist who works for Iran International, sustained leg injuries in the attack near his home in Wimbledon, southwest London.
Counter-terrorism police led the investigation over concerns he had been targeted because of his work at the television news network, which is critical of Iran’s government.
Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service said earlier this month that Nandito Badea, 19, and George Stana, 23, had been charged with wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, and wounding.
London’s Metropolitan (Met) Police said the two men were taken into custody at Heathrow Airport on Tuesday after they arrived on a flight from Romania. They are due to appear at Westminster Magistrates Court on Dec. 18, the police said.
They had previously been detained by Romanian authorities on Dec. 4 and were returned to the UK by a national extradition unit.
British police, security officials and politicians have issued warnings about what they say is Iran’s growing use of criminal proxies to carry out attacks abroad. Iran rejects those accusations.
“This has been a long-running investigation and I am pleased we have reached a point where two men have now been charged and will face prosecution here in the UK,” said Helen Flanagan from the Met's counter-terrorism command.
Flanagan added: “Now that criminal proceedings are fully active here in the UK, I continue to ask people not speculate about the case or motivation so that the criminal justice process can run its course.”
Mother of missing US journalist urges Netanyahu to pause strikes on Syria to aid search for her son
- Austin Tice, a former Marine, was abducted in Syria in August 2012 while reporting on the country’s descent into civil war
- His mother says ‘credible information’ suggests her son is in a prison close to areas pounded by Israeli strikes
LONDON: The mother of missing American journalist Austin Tice, who was abducted in Syria 12 years ago, urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pause airstrikes on Syria so that rescuers can search safely for her son.
In a letter addressed to Netanyahu, Debra Tice said her family has “credible information” that her son might be in a prison close to the Syrian capital, Damascus, and appealed for a halt to nearby Israeli military operations.
“We are aware that your military has an active campaign in the area, preventing rescuers from approaching and accessing the prison facility,” she wrote.
“We have no way of knowing if the prisoners there have food and water. We urgently request you pause strikes on this area and deploy Israeli assets to search for Austin Tice and other prisoners. Time is of the essence.”
The prime minister’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment, The New York Times reported.
The Israeli military has been bombing weapons depots and air defenses in Syria in what it described as an attempt to prevent military equipment falling into the hands of extremists.
Austin Tice, who before becoming a journalist served as an officer in the US Marine Corps, was kidnapped on Aug. 13, 2012, while reporting from Syria as the country descended into civil war. He was 31 years old at the time. The only evidence of his capture and captivity remains a 47-second video released in September 2012 that showed him bound and blindfolded.
In the 12 years since then, the US government has maintained its belief that he was alive and in the custody of the Syrian government. No group or organization has publicly claimed responsibility for his detention.
The fall of the Assad regime this month to rebel forces led by militant group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham sparked renewed efforts to locate Tice. It comes as thousands of prisoners, including the regime’s political opponents, civilians and foreigners, have been freed from detention centers in Damascus.
Debra Tice believes her son is held in a prison located beneath a Syrian military museum in the Mount Qasioun area near Damascus. She described a system of tunnels thought to connect the facility to a government palace and nearby neighborhoods.
Citing anonymous sources, Reuters reported on Monday that Tice managed to escape from his captors after just five months of captivity but was recaptured by forces loyal to Assad. Credible information about his whereabouts grew increasingly scarce over the years, though US officials remain cautiously optimistic that he is alive.
The recent escalation of Israeli attacks on targets in Syria raised concerns that Tice might have been killed in the airstrikes or trapped underground. US officials also fear that power cuts in Damascus prisons, orchestrated by Assad’s forces before he was toppled, could have deprived underground cells of breathable air.
Hopes were briefly raised this week amid reports that an American man had been spotted in Damascus. However, he turned out to be Travis Timmerman from Missouri, who had been freed by rebel forces. He was arrested this year for entering the country illegally after traveling to Syria on a “spiritual mission.”
The State Department said on Monday no US government officials are in Syria to assist in the search for Tice but finding him remains a “top priority.”
Concerns continue to grow over the fate of remaining detainees in the country, particularly in areas still affected by military strikes and instability.
Media watchdog condemns Israel over killing of 4 Gaza journalists, demands accountability
- Iman Al-Shanti, Mohammed Al-Qrinawi, Mohammed Balousha, and Ahmed Al-Louh were killed between Dec. 11 and 15
- At least in two cases, the attacks were described as ‘deliberate,’ Committee to Protect Journalists reported
LONDON: The Committee to Protect Journalists has condemned Israel’s recent attacks in Gaza, which have killed four journalists in the past week alone, and renewed calls for the international community to hold Tel Aviv accountable for its actions against media workers.
“At least 95 journalists and media workers have been killed worldwide in 2024,” CPJ’s CEO Jodie Ginsberg said in New York. “Israel is responsible for two-thirds of those deaths and yet continues to act with total impunity when it comes to the killing of journalists and its attacks on the media.”
Between Dec. 11 and 15, Israeli forces carried out multiple deadly strikes targeting media workers in Gaza, killing Iman Al-Shanti, Mohammed Al-Qrinawi, Mohammed Balousha, and Ahmed Al-Louh. Sources claim that at least two of the journalists were clearly identifiable by their press vests and accused the Israeli army of deliberately targeting civilians in the area.
On Wednesday, Al-Shanti, a 36-year-old journalist who worked for Al Aqsa Radio and contributed to Al Jazeera’s AJ+ platform, was killed alongside her family in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza’s Sheikh Radwan neighborhood.
On Friday, Al-Qrinawi, editor at the local Snd news agency, was killed with his wife and three children in an Israeli strike on Al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.
That same day, Balousha, a 38-year-old journalist reporting for Dubai-based Al Mashhad Media, died in a direct Israeli drone strike while returning from a medical checkup in northern Gaza City. Al Mashhad described the attack as deliberate.
On Saturday, Al-Louh, a 39-year-old freelance journalist who contributed to multiple outlets, including Al Jazeera, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Nuseirat camp in Gaza City. He became the seventh journalist from Al Jazeera to be killed during the war.
Following Al-Louh’s death, Israeli Defense Forces spokesperson for Arabic media Avichay Adraee accused him of being a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. However, as in similar past claims, Adraee failed to provide evidence to support the allegation. Al Jazeera condemned the killing as a “war crime” and part of a “systematic targeting of journalists in Gaza aimed at intimidating and deterring them.”
According to CPJ, at least 133 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the outbreak of the conflict 15 months ago, making it the deadliest conflict for journalists since record-keeping began. The real toll is believed to be significantly higher.
Media watchdogs and international organizations have repeatedly called for Israel and its leaders to be held accountable for what some human rights groups describe as ethnic cleansing. However, these demands have so far failed to produce tangible results.
The CPJ reached out to the Israeli military’s North America Media Desk, asking whether the IDF was aware of civilian presence in the areas it bombed and if journalists had been targeted for their work. The IDF replied that it required more time to investigate but did not specify a timeline for its response.
