#FreeThePress: in conversation with Alsu Kurmasheva and Omar Radi
Sat 12 April 2025
17:00
Free
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Committee to Protect Journalists CEO Jodie Ginsberg in conversation with formerly imprisoned journalists Alsu Kurmasheva and Omar Radi.
In May 2023, Radio Free Europe editor Alsu Kurmasheva flew for what was intended as a brief trip to see her sick mother in Kazan, Russia. She did not leave Russia for the next 12 months. Initially detained for having failed to declare her dual US-Russian citizenship, she was eventually charged with failing to register as a foreign agent, and jailed pending trial. Alsu was sentenced in July 2024 for spreading “false information” about the Russian army before her release in a prisoner swap just days later.
Omar Radi is a Moroccan investigative journalist who has faced repeated arrest and harassment at the hands of Moroccan authorities. In March 2022, he was sentenced to six years in prison in a double case of espionage and rape – charges that human rights and press freedom organizations condemned as false and brought as punishment for his investigative work. Omar was freed in July, just days before Alsu and others were released from Russia, after being pardoned by King Mohammed VI along with other jailed journalists and activists.
Alsu and Omar will discuss the ways in which authorities used false charges to punish them for their work, their experience in prison, and lessons for others at a time when the imprisonment of journalists is close to an all-time high.
Organised in association with Committee to Protect Journalists.
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Festival Internazionale del Giornalismo
Il Festival Internazionale del Giornalismo di Perugia è un evento annuale che riunisce professionisti dei media, esperti di comunicazione e appassionati di informazione da tutto il mondo. Si svolge nel centro storico di Perugia e offre conferenze, dibattiti, workshop e opportunità di networking sui temi più rilevanti del giornalismo contemporaneo.
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Jodie Ginsberg
Jodie Ginsberg is CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists, an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide and defends the right of journalists to report the news safely and without fear of reprisal. Jodie joined CPJ in 2022, having started her career as a graduate trainee with Reuters news agency and worked as a foreign correspondent in South Africa; as Reuters’ chief correspondent in Ireland; and then as then bureau chief for the U.K. and Ireland. As bureau chief, Jodie managed coverage of the 2008 financial crisis, U.K. riots and 2010 general election, as well as overseeing the merger of the Thomson and Reuters U.K. newsrooms. In 2014, Jodie was appointed chief executive of London-based freedom of expression group Index on Censorship, which she led until 2020. An internationally respected campaigner on issues of media freedom and freedom of expression, Jodie is a regular speaker on journalist safety and issues involving access to information. Fro...
Alsu Kurmasheva
Alsu Kurmasheva is a journalist with RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service who was detained in Kazan, Russia, on October 18, 2023. Alsu holds U.S. and Russian citizenship and lives in Prague, Czech Republic, with her husband and two daughters. Alsu traveled to Russia on May 20, 2023, to care for her elderly, ailing mother. She was temporarily detained while waiting for her return flight on June 2, 2023. Authorities at Kazan airport confiscated her U.S. and Russian passports, preventing her from leaving the country. She was subsequently fined 10,000 rubles ($103) for failure to register her U.S. passport with Russian authorities. Before she could pay this fine, she was detained again on October 18, 2023, for failing to declare herself a “foreign agent.” On December 11, 2023, Russian authorities launched a third investigation against Alsu for “spreading false information” about Russia’s military. Following a rapid and secret trial, Kurmasheva was convicted of “spreading false information” about Russia’s military on July 19, 2024, and sentenced to six and a half years in prison. Alsu’s detention was condemned by the governments of Austria, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Poland, and Sweden, two dozen U.S. lawmakers, as well as by EU, OSCE, US and UN officials. President Biden called for Alsu’s immediate release at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on April 27, 2024. Human rights and press freedom organizations condemned Alsu’s politically-motivated detention and called for her immediate release, including Amnesty International, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Freedom House, Memorial, PEN America, Reporters Without Borders, the International Federation of Journalists, and the International Press Institute. After more than nine months in prison, Alsu was released as part of a prisoner exchange between the United States and Russia on August 1, 2024.
Omar Radi
Omar Radi is a Moroccan investigative journalist who has faced repeated arrest and harassment at the hands of Moroccan authorities. In March 2022, Omar was sentenced to six years in prison in a double case of espionage and rape – charges that human rights and press freedom organizations condemned as false and brought as punishment for his investigative work. Radi was freed in July 2024 after being pardoned by King Mohammed VI along with other jailed journalists and activists.