A Russian court has convicted Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist for the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, was sentenced to 6½ years in prison after a secret trial, court records and officials said Monday.

The conviction in the city of Kazan came on Friday, the same day that a court in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg convicted Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich of espionage and sentenced him to 16 years in prison in a case the U.S. called politically motivated. The U.S. government has characterized Gershkovich as being wrongfully detained by Russia, a distinction the State Department has not made in Kurmasheva’s case.

Kurmasheva, a 47-year-old editor for RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir service, was convicted of “spreading false information” about the military, according to the website of Tatarstan’s Supreme Court. Spokeswoman Natalya Loseva confirmed to The Associated Press by telephone that Kurmasheva was sentenced to 6½ years in prison in a case classified as secret, without providing details about the nature of the charges against her.

When asked about the verdict on Monday, Stephen Capus, president and CEO of RFE/RL, called Kurmasheva’s trial and conviction “a travesty of justice.”

“The only just outcome is for Alsu to be immediately released from the custody of her Russian captors,” he said in a statement. “It is past time that this American citizen, our dear colleague, be reunited with her loving family.”

When asked about her at a regular press conference on July 16, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller repeated to reporters the general statement that “journalism is not a crime” and that the U.S. government had “urged her swift release” by Russia.

Miller said he had “no new information to provide regarding the finding of wrongful detention.”

The journalistic advocacy group Reporters Without Borders, better known by its French acronym RSF, has started a petition calling on the US government to rule on Kurmasheva’s unjust detention.

“Her targeted approach was undoubtedly the result of her journalistic work,” the group said on its campaign page, calling for a resolution that it said would “mobilize all government resources to secure her release.”

Kurmasheva, a US-Russian citizen who lives in Prague with her husband and two daughters, was arrested in October 2023 and charged with failing to register as a foreign agent while gathering information about the Russian military. She was later also charged with spreading “false information” about the Russian military under legislation that effectively criminalizes any public statement about the war in Ukraine that deviates from the Kremlin line.

Kurmasheva was initially detained at Kazan International Airport in June 2023 after traveling to Russia the previous month to visit her ailing elderly mother. Officials confiscated her U.S. and Russian passports and fined her for failing to register her U.S. passport. She was awaiting the return of her passports when she was arrested on new charges in October of that year.

The reporter’s 15-year-old daughter, Bibi Butorin, told CBS News earlier this year that the family understood it was a risk for Kurmasheva to travel to Russia, “but she was only going there for two weeks, and it was for my sick grandmother.”

“My mom is definitely my biggest inspiration,” Bibi said. “And I just miss her, more than I can say. And I worry so much about her safety.”

Kurmasheva is listed as the editor of a book featuring stories of ordinary people who resisted the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“I know this book is a problem; it’s in her file,” Pavel Butorin, Kurmasheva’s husband, told CBS News. “There’s nothing inflammatory, nothing criminal about these stories. There’s no call for violence in the book. These are just opinions — not even Alsu’s. But as a journalist, she certainly has the right to collect and publish opinions.”

RFE/RL has repeatedly called for her release.

RFE/RL was told by Russian authorities in 2017 that it had to register as a foreign agent, but it challenged Moscow’s use of foreign agent laws at the European Court of Human Rights. The organization has been fined millions of dollars by Russia.

In February, RFE/RL was banned in Russia as an undesirable organization.

The swift and secret trials of Kurmasheva and Gershkovich in Russia’s highly politicized legal system raised hopes of a possible prisoner swap between Moscow and Washington. Russia has previously flagged a possible exchange with Gershkovich, but said a verdict in his case must first be reached.

Americans are increasingly being arrested in Russia. As far as is known, nine American citizens are being held, as tensions between the two countries have increased due to fighting in Ukraine.

US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield has accused Moscow of treating “people as bargaining chips”, naming Gershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelan53, a corporate security executive from Michigan who is serving a 16-year prison sentence after being convicted on espionage charges that he and the U.S. government have always denied.

Gershkovich, 32, was arrested on March 29, 2023, during a reporting trip to the Ural city of Yekaterinburg. Authorities alleged, without providing evidence, that he was gathering classified information for the U.S.

He has been behind bars since his arrest, a time that will count as part of his sentence. Most of that time was spent in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo prison, a Tsarist-era detention facility used during Joseph Stalin’s purges, when executions were carried out in the basement. He was transferred to Yekaterinburg for trial.

Gershkovich was the first American journalist to be arrested on espionage charges since Nicholas Daniloff in 1986, at the height of the Cold War. Foreign journalists in Russia were shocked by Gershkovich’s arrest, even as the country has passed increasingly repressive laws on freedom of expression since sending troops into Ukraine.

US President Joe Biden said after his sentencing that Gershkovich was “targeted by the Russian government because he is a journalist and an American.”