YEKATERINBURG, Russia (AP) — A Russian court on Friday convicted Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich on espionage charges his employer and the U.S. have rejected as a sham. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison after a secretive and rapid trial in the country’s highly politicized legal system.

Gershkovich, his employer and the U.S. government vehemently denied the charges. U.S. officials and The Wall Street Journal have denounced the trial as a sham.

Gershkovich, 32, was detained in March 2023 while on a reporting trip to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg and accused of spying for the U.S., and has been behind bars ever since.

He was the first U.S. journalist taken into custody on espionage charges since Nicholas Daniloff in 1986, at the height of the Cold War. Gershkovich’s arrest shocked foreign journalists in Russia, even though the country has enacted increasingly repressive laws on freedom of speech after sending troops into Ukraine.