For Pavel Butorin, husband of the journalist of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) imprisoned in RussiaAlsu Kurmasheva, was sadly surprised to learn from a press report on Monday that Russia celebrated a secret trialfound Alsu guilty of a crime she never committed and sentenced her to six and a half years in prison.
“It was certainly shocking news, but it was not unexpected. Conviction rates are very high in Russia, almost 100%, especially in political cases,” he said in an interview with the Russian media on Thursday. Marti News.
A court in the city of Kazan revealed on Monday that it had convicted Kurmasheva for allegedly spreading false information about the Russian military, in a trial held behind closed doors on Friday, July 19.
Kurmasheva, a mother of two daughters, is a journalist living in Prague and has been detained in her native Russian region of Tatarstan since 18 October.
Asked whether he would appeal the verdict, Butorin, who also works for RFE/RL, a news service of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), said he has very little visibility into the actual legal proceedings in the Alsu case, and knowing the Russian legal system, he has “very little expectation that justice will be done.”
“Russia has not provided any public evidence of any wrongdoing by Alsu. I still don’t understand what Russia considers false in Alsu’s reports. I would like to know what Russia considers false, and also to point out a single report that they consider false,” he said.
Butorin reiterated that his wife is not a member of the opposition, nor an activist, “she is just a journalist who does not represent any threat to the Russian government.”
“She is imprisoned in Russia, not for what she has done. She is imprisoned in Russia for what she represents and who she is. And she is someone who chose to become an American citizen, who immigrated and who works for a media organization funded by Congress. That is what this is about,” he added.
Kurmasheva was initially detained in June as she tried to leave Russia after visiting her mother, and was subsequently charged with what initially appeared to be a minor offence, before Russian investigators opened a criminal case accusing her of spreading false information about the Russian military, something she has denied.
Butorin has asked the US government to designate Kurmasheva as “unjustly detained”, as Washington considers the case of the Wall Street Journal journalist, also imprisoned in Russia, Evan Gershkovichto open more diplomatic avenues to negotiate his release.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, in his Monday, July 22, press briefing, declined to comment on the department’s deliberations on whether to designate Kurmasheva “wrongfully detained,” but said Washington had called for her release.
Regarding the designation, Butorin said his ultimate goal is to free Alsou and return home, and that if she can return without the designation, he and his daughters would be “okay.”
“That said, it is concerning that she has not been designated for so many months. We would like the US government to make it known that it does not consider her a criminal. We want the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs to be on Alsu’s side, and for that to happen, she needs to be designated,” Butorin said.
The jailed journalist’s husband said this would “send a signal to the journalistic community,” especially American journalists working abroad, that “if they are detained in the line of duty, for their work as American journalists, they will automatically be designated as unjustly detained, so that the U.S. government will commit resources to their release.”
“I am speaking to you today as Alsu’s husband. I know her as a very kind person. She is a devoted mother to her daughters. She has been my best friend for over 20 years. There is nothing I want more than for her to come back to us. We know she has done nothing wrong. And we know we will see her again, hopefully very soon,” he said.
Source: Marti News
