The court in Kazan extended the arrest of Radio Liberty journalist Alsa Kurmasheva

Today, February 1, the Soviet district court of Kazan extended the arrest of Alsa Kurmasheva, a journalist of the Tatar-Bashkir service of Radio Liberty, until April 5. The court granted the relevant request of the investigation, reports Idel.Realii. The journalist has been in a pre-trial detention center since mid-October 2023.

The session was held in closed mode – the press was allowed only to announce the decision, and others who came to the court were refused entry into the hall at all. Representatives of the embassies of Austria, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands were present in court today.

Alsu Kurmasheva’s lawyer insisted on changing the restraining order to house arrest, but the court refused.

The journalist is charged under two articles of the Criminal Code of Russia, namely, that she did not submit documents to include herself in the register of “foreign agents”, as well as spreading so-called fakes about the Russian army. According to the second article, the journalist is accused of distributing the book “There is no war. 40 historical Russians opposing the invasion of Ukraine”, which was presented by the editors of “Idel.Realii” in the fall of 2022.

Also Kurmasheva has dual citizenship: USA and Russia. Before her arrest, she lived in Prague with her husband and children. In the middle of May last year, she came to her native city of Kazan for a few days due to family reasons.

“You admire my courage, that I came to my home (!) at such a time,” Alsu wrote in a letter from the pre-trial detention center on January 18 of this year. – But we live now – and we will not have a “second” time. There will be “time”, of course, but there may not be someone close to you who needs help today. <…> I am responsible for my family. For young children, for an elderly mother.

On June 2, 2023, Alsa was detained by security forces at the Kazan airport – before departure from Russia. Her American and Russian passports were confiscated. A few days later, a criminal case was opened against the journalist for failure to notify her of her second citizenship. They took a subscription not to leave Alsu. The investigation of this case dragged on for several months. Only in October, the Magistrate’s Court in Kazan found her guilty and fined her 10,000 rubles.

A week after the announcement of the verdict – on October 18 – the journalist was detained again. A few days later, the court chose Kurmasheva as a preventive measure in the form of detention. Another month and a half later — on December 11, 2023 — the investigation filed a journalistic charge on the article about “fakes.”

January 25 marked 100 days since the arrest of Alsu. On that day, the acting president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Stephen Kapus declared that “even one day of unjust imprisonment behind bars is a tragedy, but it is unjust to keep a US citizen in a Russian prison for 100 days.”

Commenting on today’s court decision, Kapus called it extremely sad for her and her family. “It is already the fourth month of Alsu in a Russian prison. It is obvious that she was arrested unjustly, only because she is an American citizen and a journalist who has the courage to do her job – these are two circumstances that are intolerable for Moscow.”

• The government condemned the detention of Alsu Canada, the Czech RepublicFrance, of Poland and Swedenas well as The Supreme Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, President of the European Parliament, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on issues of media freedom and United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. The platform of the Council of Europe to promote the protection of journalism and the safety of journalists published a call to free Alsa.
• International human rights and media freedom organizations also condemned the politically motivated detention of Alsa and called for her immediate release. Among them: Amnesty International, Committee to Protect Journalists, Freedom HousePEN-America, Reporters Without Borders, the International Federation of Journalists, etc International Press Institute. The Committee for the Protection of Journalists stated that “Alsu Kurmasheva’s arrest is today the most egregious example of abuse of the Russian legislation on foreign agents against the independent press.”
• In November 2023, the human rights organization Reporters Without Borders, the Coalition of Women in Journalism, the National Press Club, the Committee to Protect Journalists and 10 other organizations appealed to the US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken with an appeal to “speed up the process and immediately declare” Alsa Kurmasheva, a journalist of the Tatar-Bashkir service of Radio Liberty, “unlawfully detained”.
• The US State Department pays “huge attention” to the case of Alsa Kurmasheva. This was announced by the official representative of the State Department on January 18 Matthew Miller. The foreign policy agency has not yet recognized the journalist as unlawfully detained – according to Miller, this does not mean that such efforts are not being made: “The fact that we have not yet made an official decision on the “unlawful detention” does not indicate the work that we we really do it or about [наших намерениях на] the future,” said Matthew Miller, answering the journalist’s question Alex Raufoglu.
• On November 30, the project “Support for political prisoners. Memorial” recognized Alsa as a political prisoner.