00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis with Forbes Breaking News. Joining me now is Dr. Gulnaziz
00:07Saeed with the Committee to Protect Journalists. Dr. Saeed, thank you so much for joining me today.
00:13Thank you for having me.
00:15It's a follow-up to a conversation we had over a year ago when Wall Street
00:19journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was originally detained in Russia.
00:23Now he has a trial date set. It's for next week, June 26th. What's your reaction to the
00:29news that he will be standing trial? I've been saying from the beginning that
00:38it's very likely that Evan will be tried and convicted in Russia before we will see any
00:46development for his release, namely potential prisoners exchange. So in that regard,
00:54this news didn't come as a surprise. The trial will start next week, and it
01:02is very likely to last for a few months before we see conviction.
01:08And last year, like you said, you believe that Russia believes in their eyes that
01:13Evan's already guilty. He'll likely face a conviction. So when or at all can we expect
01:20the United States to step in and maybe see a prisoner swap go into action?
01:27I think the answer to this question lies with the Russian authorities rather than with the
01:32American authorities. As far as we know from the Wall Street Journal and other reports,
01:38the U.S. officials have been in touch with the Russians negotiating a potential prisoners
01:47exchange for quite a few months, actually. But I think the Russians are playing a long-term
01:55game here. I think for them now it's very important to see the results of the U.S. elections
02:02and maybe even the inauguration of the next president before they will actually act.
02:10Do you think from the – does the CPJ rather think that the Biden administration and the
02:16State Department are doing enough to secure Evan's release? Because I want to get your
02:20response to some comments from Secretary of State Antony Blinken. He said last year that the United
02:25States was intensely engaged in talks with Russia to secure the release, but he added that at the
02:30moment he didn't see a, quote, clear way forward. So now, a year later, here we are, Evan's still
02:37going to trial, he's still detained in Russia, State Department labeling him wrongly detained.
02:42Are you happy with the progress?
02:46Look, we are not private to all the details of the negotiations. We know as much as the State
02:54Department officials tell us in some meetings and as much as we know from the media reports.
03:02As far as I understand, the U.S. officials have been very committed to get Evan released and
03:09return him back to the United States. But as I said, a lot depends on the Russian officials and
03:17their approach, and they are playing a long-term game here. They see Evan as nothing but a
03:26bargaining chip, and they are going to – in their eyes, Evan's value will increase if he is a
03:34convicted felon, and that's where the whole process is headed.
03:39I want to know how Evan's doing, if you have any insight into that, because
03:44he's been in a Moscow prison called the Fort of O for over a year now. And last year,
03:49when you and I talked, you said that prison was notorious for its horrible conditions.
03:54So does the CPJ have a sense of how he's holding up?
03:58You know, Evan has been really – he's a very strong person. He has kept his high spirits.
04:09I think partially it's because he knows Russia so well. He knows how the government works,
04:16and he knows that he's innocent, and he is a part of a big game the Kremlin has been
04:24playing with the United States and with the West. And he also knows that we at CPJ and
04:31many other press freedom advocates, his journalist colleagues, his family, everyone
04:39have been supporting him, have been with him emotionally and spiritually. So he's been
04:46very strong in how the whole process, including this judiciary, works in Russia.
04:53And I think he's prepared. I know you're saying you believe
04:57Russia's playing this long game here. He's likely to be convicted. He faces up to 20 years.
05:03What are you looking out for next then, within the trial, after the trial,
05:09anything between now and hopefully his release?
05:14Look, the worst thing about these kind of cases in Russia is that espionage cases are usually
05:20held behind closed doors. So we will know very little about the details of the charges
05:28or the case itself. I hope that the representatives of the U.S. embassy and consulate will be able to
05:37see Evan during the trial, the hearings, but not be present during the entire hearings,
05:44every single one, because they will not be allowed. And it's very normal for Russia to
05:53connect anybody with espionage. Actually, the conviction rate is over 90%.
06:00And there are lots and lots of espionage cases in Russia practically every day. It's usually
06:10the cases that involve Russian citizens, not necessarily foreign citizens and not journalists.
06:18That's why we may not know much about them. But what we know is the conviction rate is very high.
06:25Last year, you said that you hoped that the solution would be political and not legal.
06:31You think that this is a highly politicized case. Can you talk about that?
06:36This is indeed a highly politicized case because even the detention of Evan was approved by
06:44President Putin, as far as we learned from our sources in Russia. He confirmed and he approved
06:51and he has it under his control, as they say, in Russia, which means that he's monitoring it
06:58very closely. His aides reported to him and he knows what exactly he wants out of the deal with
07:06the United States or with the U.S. and other Western countries because one of the potential
07:13individuals that he wants to exchange Evan for is in jail in Germany. I also wanted to add that
07:21the very fact that Evan's case is sent to a court in Yekaterinburg, the city in Siberia where he was
07:30first detained, shows that the Russian authorities try to sort of make it very difficult for U.S.
07:42diplomats and other foreign diplomats to monitor the trial, to be present, even by standing outside
07:50of the courthouse and to sort of decrease the attention to the case as much as they can, but at
07:59the same time they're trying to keep pretending that this is a very legal case where the rules
08:10are followed because according to the Russian criminal code, the case is usually sent to the
08:19court where a crime was allegedly committed. That's why we are going to see Evan in a courtroom
08:26in Yekaterinburg and not in Moscow where he's been held so far. This is really scary, a scary
08:34story for journalists all over the world and particularly in Russia. What is the implication
08:40here for foreign correspondents in Russia? Look, first of all, Evan is not the only American
08:48journalist in Russian jail. There is also Kormasheva, a correspondent of Radio Free Europe,
08:54Radio Liberty, which is a U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster that works editorially independently
09:02from the U.S. authorities, and she's been in detention in Russia since October, also on absurd
09:08charges. As we see these two cases, and also there are other cases of foreign
09:17journalists being kicked out of Russia with their accreditation not being renewed or their visa
09:27not being renewed, we see that there is this witch hunt against foreign media in Russia
09:34after they basically eliminated all independent local media outlets inside the country after the
09:41full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. They went ahead with trying to silence all foreign
09:49correspondents working in Russia, and Evan is a victim of that approach of the Kremlin.
09:56Dr. Golnozha Saeed, thank you so much for the conversation, and I hope the next time we speak
10:02there's a better update here. Thank you so much.
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