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00:00The US journalist Evan Gershkovich is back in court for espionage in Russia in a
00:05proceeding which is classified as a state secret. That means no reporters, no
00:09friends, no family members or US embassy staff are allowed into that courtroom
00:13where Gershkovich faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted. The Wall Street
00:18Journal reporter was arrested in March of last year. The accusation that he
00:21collected secret evidence about a Russian tank manufacturer on the orders
00:26of the CIA. Well earlier we spoke to our former Moscow correspondent Nick
00:31Holdsworth. Evan was born in the US but born to Russian parents, Russian born
00:39parents. His parents both Jewish had left Russia in the 1970s due to
00:42anti-semitism there. So Evan was raised bilingual, he's a fluent Russian speaker.
00:48He arrived in Moscow in 2017 where typically for many young journalists
00:52seeking to make their career there he worked for the English-language Moscow
00:57Times and he worked there for quite a while. He broke a lot of stories on
01:01shoestring budgets and then he briefly worked for Agence France-Presse covering
01:06fires in Siberia, opposition protests and Russia's response to the pandemic before
01:13landing this choice job as the Moscow correspondent for the Wall Street
01:18Journal which was his dream job. He's a very friendly, garrulous character. We've
01:25seen him briefly in some of those pre-trial appearances in Moscow courts,
01:30always smiling and joking. He's been held in Moscow's Lefortovo jail which is a
01:37old 19th century prison known as a pretty grim place to stay but he's kept
01:44his spirits up. Colleagues and friends have been writing to him. I wrote to him
01:48myself at one point and eventually did get a reply from him and he's spending
01:54his time reading, meditating, exercising. He's keeping his health up by having
02:01friends send fruit in to supplement the rather grim prison diet. So I mean he's
02:08somebody who's very confident and hopeful and he knows that probably
02:13eventually he will be swapped for somebody held by the US. Russian
02:18President Vladimir Putin has hinted that Gershkovich could be freed if a Russian
02:25who was jailed in Germany for gunning down a Chechen separatist leader in a
02:31Berlin park, if he is freed and swapped for Gershkovich, Evan could find himself
02:37back home. But that's a way off yet and it remains to be seen what happens in
02:43this trial and whether he is actually found guilty by the Russian authorities
02:47and sentenced to 20 years in prison, up to 20 years in prison.