The Russian judge who convicted the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has said the trial was short because it did not examine any “mater

Judge who sentenced Evan Gershkovich says trial did not look at evidence

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2024-09-28 15:30:04

The Russian judge who convicted the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has said the trial was short because it did not examine any “material evidence” and the verdict did not take long because he could “type quickly”.

“The case itself was small. I don’t remember how many folders there were – three or five,” said Andrei Mineyev, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.

“Why did it go so quickly? The point is the court did not examine material evidence,” Mineyev said, adding that this was because neither the prosecution nor the defence had requested it.

Mineyev made the comments at a conference in the city of Ekaterinburg, where he spoke about different cases he had worked on, according to Russian media.

Gershkovich was arrested in March 2023 while on a reporting trip to Ekaterinburg. He became the first foreign journalist held for espionage in post-Soviet Russia.

Prosecutors accused Gershkovich, 32, whose parents emigrated from the Soviet Union, of gathering secret information about the activities of a big tank factory in the region.