The Journal. - Russia Tries a WSJ Reporter in a Secret Court

Episode Date: July 17, 2024

WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich has been held in Russia for more than a year on an espionage accusation that he, the U.S. government and The Wall Street Journal vehemently deny. Gershkovich will appear in court Thursday for another hearing. WSJ’s Matthew Luxmoore explores what we know about the secret trial and why even the Gershkovich’s defense lawyers are restricted from publicly discussing it. Further Reading: - The Shadowy Judicial System That Controls the Fate of WSJ’s Evan Gershkovich  Further Listening: - A WSJ Reporter Arrested in Russia  - Russian Court Upholds WSJ Reporter’s Detention  - Two Parents on a Crusade to Free Their Son  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our colleague Evan Gershkovich has been held in Russia for more than a year, and his trial has now officially begun. There's another hearing in his case tomorrow. The Russian government has charged him with espionage, a charge that Evan, the U.S. government, and the Wall Street Journal vehemently deny. Evan's trial is happening behind closed doors. When it's a secret trial, the defense team is very seriously hobbled by the circumstances in which these trials are held.

That's our colleague Matthew Luxmore. The only people permitted inside the courtroom for these closed trials are the defendant's defense team, his lawyers, the prosecutor, and one or more judges. So no U.S. diplomats were allowed, none of Evan's friends, no journalists. The only other people allowed in the room? Agents from the Federal Security Service, or the FSB,

the agency that arrested Evan in the first place. Is Evan going to get a fair trial? Well, history has shown, and especially in cases where the charges are espionage, the chances of acquittal are almost nil. It's essentially unheard of for a defendant in a case so heavily overseen and orchestrated by the Federal Security Service to be acquitted. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knudsen. It's Wednesday, July 17th. Coming up on the show, the shadowy judicial system that's trying Evan Gershkovich. to help provide meals for us. These meals help fuel my love for acting. When people are fed, futures are nourished.

Join the movement to end hunger at feedingamerica.org slash act now. Brought to you by Feeding America and the Ad Council. The last time the public saw Evan was at the end of June. That's when he had his first hearing in the trial. And he showed up in court looking like a Russian prisoner. So Evan was led into a courtroom in Yekaterinburg, which is a city several hundred miles east of Moscow, with his head shaved, according to prison rules. And he was placed in a cage fronted by bulletproof glass. And he stood there throughout the hearing.

In the first 15 minutes just before the hearing, TV cameras were allowed to come in. Journalists were allowed to come in to film him, even to ask some questions. And at that point, everyone had to leave. It was just Evan, his defense team, the prosecutor, the judge, and the guards who stood next to his cage. So Evan's been in jail for about 15 months now. What do you know about how he's doing?

Well, we can send letters to Evan and his friends, family, colleagues, including me. I write to him regularly. We receive letters back from him and he tells us about how he's doing. And, you know, his mood waxes and wanes, of course, but, you know, he's a very tough guy. And we see that in court whenever we get those very, very rare glimpses of him in public

that, you know, he's smiling, he's kind of winking at his lawyers and other people he knows in the courtroom, some of whom are the journalists. And he looks, I think, fairly good, especially considering the circumstances. Because his trial is taking place in secret, Matthew and other journalists aren't able to learn much about how his case is going. Russia uses secret trials in cases where it says state secrets are involved. If defense lawyers talk about a closed-door case publicly,

they can be charged with treason. The lawyers, his defense team, is not allowed to speak about details of the case publicly. Or if they do, they have to be incredibly careful in any of the information that they share, not only with the media, but also to, you know, Evan's friends, family, his employer, the Wall Street Journal. So there's a very, very serious disadvantage there for the defense. Defense lawyers also have limited access to evidence. They're only allowed to view it for a certain amount of time. And while under supervision, they can take notes,

but they can't make copies or even access those documents during the hearings. They can't even take their notes home. Because of those restrictions, lawyers in closed trials in Russia are, they are incredibly reliant on their memory. They have to memorize intricate details of the charges against the defendant and of the case materials, those pertaining to any classified information, because they cannot study those in their free time or at home and use them to prepare for the trial. And they're also not allowed to have them physically before them during the hearing.

That gives a huge advantage to the prosecutor who, in most cases is allowed to handle that material. The prosecution has it all in front of them, but the lawyers only get a certain amount of time to look at it and then just try to come up with an argument that they have to recite from memory. Yes, they have to remember the details of the case because they cannot hold those documents in their hands during the hearing. They're only allowed limited access to them beforehand. And do you know about what happens in the hearing itself? I mean, like, are there witnesses that will be testifying? Is there cross-examination? Well, presumably it's whatever the judge and the prosecution, however they want to lead the trial. Russia claims to have evidence that Evan was engaged in espionage.

We know that he was simply doing his job as a journalist, and we have not seen Russia provide any evidence suggesting that Evan is guilty of anything other than doing his job. So I think behind closed doors, of course, we do not know what will be happening because we do not have access to the hearing as his colleagues and as journalists and neither will Russian journalists and reporters. The potential presence of the FSB, Russia's powerful security service, could also present challenges for Evan's case. And we know as well from speaking to former judges and prosecutors at the FSB places, a lot of pressure on the judges in many of these cases. They are allowed to enter the courtroom and take part, be spectators to Evans' trial if they want to.

And in many past closed trials, that has been the case. They can find out information about the trial at any point by calling the lawyers for questioning or really putting pressure on the judge or the prosecutor to find out about what's taking place behind closed doors. How do these closed-door trials usually go for the defendants? Chances of acquittal are vanishingly small. In the region where Evan's trial is taking place, there were only 39 acquittals last year, out of more than

22,000 cases, according to the court. The judge in Evans' trial, a man called Andrei Mikhneyev, who has around 24 years service as a judge, he said in 2021, after serving as a judge already for 21 years, that in his whole career up to that point, he had only issued four acquittals. Wow. In 21 years of service. Why are there so few acquittals? There's a lot of different reasons for this. We've conducted interviews with many former judges and prosecutors who say that the FSB does contact judges in advance of some trials where the FSB is one of the interested parties and they place pressure on them. But the main element of this is that the Russian judicial system and especially the investigative committee, which is like the FBI in the US, they place a huge onus on only bringing to trial those cases that they think are watertight and will lead to conviction.

Have closed-door trials like this always been a part of Russia's judicial system? Closed trials really became routine practice in Russia, in fact, in what was then the Soviet Union, in the 1930s, where the Great Terror, the huge wave of political repressions launched by dictator Joseph Stalin, brought to trial thousands upon thousands of perceived enemies of the state. So people that he saw as the opponents of his political regime. And they closed these trials in order to kind of give them plausible deniability to keep those people away from prying eyes.

And in those cases, because there were thousands and thousands of these people that the state was executing or sending to the gulag forced labor camps, the sentences were passed at lightning speed. And after the Stalin period in the decades that followed, there was kind of what historians call a kind of thaw, a lessening of some restrictions, closed trials became less common. In the 1990s, after the Soviet Union collapsed, there were efforts at judicial reform, and the number of closed-door trials declined. But that didn't last too long because the FSB, it once again started to influence cases. And so since then, especially under Putin, since Putin came to power in 2000, that has become an increasingly widespread practice.

It really accelerated with Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when the Russian government really accelerated its crackdown on political opposition. Since the chance of acquittal is so low, Evan's best option might be a prisoner swap. That's next. Hansen. My family relied on public assistance to help provide meals for us. These meals help fuel my love for acting. When people are fed, futures are nourished. Join the movement to end hunger at feedingamerica.org slash act now. Brought to you by Feeding America and the Ad Council. Earlier this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin sat down with Tucker Carlson. During the interview, Putin indicated he'd be open to exchanging Evan for another prisoner. The interview is being dubbed in English.

We're willing to solve it. But there are certain terms being discussed via special services channels. I believe an agreement can be reached. There's, of course, much more to Ivan Gushkovich's case and indeed his current situation than the charges brought by Russia. Russia, of course, has been sending signals that it's willing to negotiate on Ivan's fate, that it's open to talks about him possibly being included in the prisoner swap. And every time Russia signals this, including on the very day that his trial first started, that he had his first hearing, it shows that the charges it's

brought against Evan and the trial itself is far more than what Russia claims is some kind of criminal investigation. It's really a geopolitical game in many ways where American citizens, including professional journalists like Evan, are being used as pawns in order for Russia to be able to bring home some of the Russian prisoners held in jails in Western countries. Who might Putin want to swap Evan for? Putin's dropped quite strong hints that the person that he would want to bring back to Russia is this convicted assassin, a Russian citizen who's being held in a German jail. But Putin hasn't given any specifics to that effect. He's only hinted quite strongly at it. But it's impossible to know when that kind of deal can be struck. What do we know about this assassin that Putin has hinted he wants back?

Well, Vadim Krasikov was, according to German authorities, he was a hired assassin who was sent to assassinate a Chechen dissenter. So this Russian Republic in the south of Russia, and he was arrested by German officials, put on trial and convicted. And he's been held now in Germany for sometimes several years. And Putin has hinted quite strongly that he wants him back. So if that were to happen, the U.S. would not only have to negotiate with Russia, they'd also have to include Germany as well. That seems sort of complicated.

Yes, and that's why it presumably takes such a long time. And there's so many different elements to juggle. And with these deals, you know, everything can be set up based on our reporting and what we understand. Everything can be set up and it can all fall apart at the last moment. There's so many different moving elements at the same time that everything has to come together perfectly and it can fall apart at the last moment. The U.S. government has said it's doing what it can to get Evan released.

So what is your sense of what the future may hold for Evan? Well, we're obviously hoping that the U.S. government is doing everything it can and is speaking to their Russian counterparts and trying to arrange some kind of deal for Evan to return home. And until that happens, he will have hearings in this closed secret trial without us knowing what's going on behind those closed doors. He'll be kept in the pre-trial detention center doing what he's done so effectively so far, which is kind of keeping himself together, keeping his head up high. And I think being supported by all the letters he's been

up high and I think being supported by all the letters he's been receiving. And all of that helps him, I think, you know, during those long months he spends in custody. That's all for today, Wednesday, July 17th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Thomas Grove. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.