American journalist Evan Gershkowitz, who was arrested in March in Russia on charges of “espionage”, appealed against a Moscow court’s decision to extend his pretrial detention by three months.

According to the website of the Moscow court, Gershkovich’s lawyers appealed on Friday a judge’s decision to extend his pretrial detention until November 30, pending his trial. The Lefortovsky court made the decision this Thursday during a closed session.

A reporter for the Wall Street Journal, Gershkovich was arrested by Russian security services while reporting in Yekaterinburg, Urals, on March 29.

Since then he has been held in Lefortovo prison of Moscow, used by the Russian security services (FSB) to hold prisoners in near-total isolation.

The respected 31-year-old journalist, who has worked as a correspondent in Moscow and for the Agence France-Presse (AFP), is charged with espionage, which carries a 20-year prison sentence. He rejects the accusations, as does Washington, his newspaper, his entourage and his family.

Moscow has never substantiated these accusations, nor has it presented any evidence, and the whole process has been classified as secret. So far, no date has been set for his trial.

His arrest comes amid heightened diplomatic tension between Russia and the United States following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The imprisonment of an accredited foreign journalist by the Russian authorities is unprecedented since the Soviet era.

In recent years, Russian authorities have arrested many American citizens who were sentenced to heavy sentences.

Washington accuses Moscow of using them as a means of exchanging them for Russians held in the United States.