A COURT IN RUSSIA SENTENCED RUSSIAN AMERICAN RENOWED JOURNALIST AlSU KURMASHEVA TO SIX AND HALF YEARS IN PRISON ON FRIDAY.

A court in Russia convicted Russian American Journalist Mrs. Alsu Kurmasheva of reporting false information about the country’s military and sentenced her to 6½ years in prison on Friday — the same day Wall Street Journal correspondent Mr. Evan Gershkovich was sentenced to 16 years on espionage charges, marking a new level of persecution of foreign press by the Kremlin.

Mrs Kurmasheva, 47, a renowed editor with U.S. government-financed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was convicted in a closed trial on Friday in Kazan, nearly 500 miles east of Moscow, the same day as Mr. Evan Gershkovich’s conviction in Yekaterinburg, a city in the Urals. News of Kurmasheva’s conviction, however, emerged only Monday.