Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich has been sentenced to 16 years in Russian prison. The court in Yekaterinburg made the guilty verdict on Friday right before 3 pm local time. Gershkovich was tried in a secret proceedings on espionage charges and prosecutors have offered no evidence of their allegations. 

Gershkovich held his closing remarks behind closed doors at the court on Friday morning. The prosecutors had been vying to get a sentence of 18 years in prison for espionage charges against the Wall Street Journal reporter. The 32-year-old American citizen has maintained his innocence since his arrest while on a reporting assignment on in Yekaterinburg for the Wall Street Journal.

The US has said that Gershkovich was wrongly detained. Russia holds another American prisoner in Paul Whelan, who the US also designated as wrongfully detained. The sentence is representative of the first espionage conviction of a western journalist in modern-day Russia. The proceedings were recently moved up by three weeks, according to the New York Times. The WSJ has signaled that the charges against Gershkovich are politically motivated.  

Reporters who had come to the court, about 900 miles east of Moscow, were not allowed to see him in the courtroom on Friday. The first hearing against Gershkovich in the case took place on June 26. Thursday was the second hearing, and the court wrapped up the investigation of the evidence as well as testimony. Espionage cases take about four months in the country, according to the Times.  

“This disgraceful, sham conviction comes after Evan has spent 478 days in prison, wrongfully detained, away from his family and friends, prevented from reporting, all for doing his job as a journalist,”  publisher of the WSJ Almar Latour and Wall Street Journal Editor in Chief Emma Tucker said in a joint statement. “We will continue to do everything possible to press for Evan’s release and to support his family.” A court spokesperson said that Gershkovich "did not admit guilt" during the proceedings on Friday.

When the Kremlin was asked on Friday about if there was a possibility of an exchange for Gershkovich, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “I’m leaving that question without an answer.” In June, Russian prosecutors approved an inducement with false charges against the journalist, alleging that he had been a contractor on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency.