BRUNSWICK, Maine — On Friday, a Russian judge handed down a 16-year prison sentence to Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter and Bowdoin graduate whose arrest and trial for espionage has been largely condemned as a sham by the United States government.
Gershkovich also strongly denies the charges as does his employer.
One of Gershkovich’s academic mentors from his time at Bowdoin, Professor Brock Clarke, lamented the sentence and called him a "brave person."
"He put himself in harm's way for important stories and that’s not a crime. That’s a thing we should keep stressing and stressing again," Clarke said Friday.
As a student in his introductory fiction class, Clarke remembers Gershkovich as a talented writer and a curious person with a kind and patient spirit.
"[He] was always asking for advice, always listening to what other people had to say," Clarke added. "He has this good, affable, easygoing writing style and manner."
Now Gershkovich, who wrote for the Bowdoin Orient and majored in philosophy, is facing hard time in a maximum-security penal colony in Russia—with no evidence of espionage presented to the public in support of the conviction.
To James Warhola, a professor of political science at the University of Maine, the trial and conviction show the state of the Russian justice system under President Vladimir Putin.
"The likelihood of him getting a fair trial was close to zero," Warhola said Friday.
Warhola said the bar for what qualifies as a state secret is low in Russia, and that Putin is likely directing the trial as a plot for political gain.
"It's hard for me to imagine that there was not some sort of direction from above," Warhola continued.
Evan Gershkovich will get an opportunity to appeal the verdict.