The court is expected to deliver its verdict in the Wall Street Journal reporter’s espionage trial on Friday.
Russian prosecutor seeks 18-year prison sentence for American journalist Evan Gershkovich who was accused of espionage.
The court said the verdict should be delivered at 1200 GMT on Friday.
The 32-year-old Wall Street Journal correspondent is the first Western journalist in Russia to be arrested on espionage charges in post-Soviet Russia.
Gershkovich is accused by prosecutors of collecting secret information about Uralvagonzavod, a tank factory for Russia’s war in Ukraine, on orders from the CIA.
The journalist, his employer and the US government deny the allegations, saying he was just doing his job, with accreditation from the Russian Foreign Ministry.
The Kremlin has provided no public evidence of the espionage charges against him, saying only that he was caught “red-handed” spying at a tank factory.
He was arrested in March 2023 during a reporting trip to the Urals city of Yekaterinburg and later spent nearly 16 months in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo prison.
The final closed-door hearing began at around 10:45 a.m. (0545 GMT) at the Sverdlovsk Regional Court in Yekaterinburg, with closing arguments from the prosecution and defense teams.
In Russia, closed trials are the norm for treason or espionage cases involving classified documents.
Gershkovich’s trial has progressed rapidly since the first hearing in late June, with the prosecution and defense teams presenting their closing arguments on Friday.
Other similar cases in Russia have been tried much more slowly, with several weeks or even months between hearings.
‘Money change’
Tensions are running high between the United States, Gershkovich’s birth country, and Russia, his parents’ home country, over Moscow’s role in the military invasion of Ukraine.
For Washington, his arrest was above all a “negotiating argument” for Russia to obtain the release of its nationals convicted abroad.
Russia usually concludes legal proceedings against foreigners before reaching any agreement on their exchange for Russians held abroad.
Both Moscow and Washington have said they are open to exchanging the journalist as part of a deal, but neither has given any indication of when that might happen.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that talks between U.S. and Russian intelligence services on possible prisoner swaps were underway, without naming specific people.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has hinted that he wants to free Vadim Krasikov, a Russian convicted in Germany of killing a Chechen separatist commander. German judges have said the assassination was orchestrated by Russian authorities.
Other U.S. nationals detained in Russia include journalist Alsou Kurmasheva and ballerina Ksenia Karelina, both U.S. and Russian citizens, as well as former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who is serving a 16-year prison sentence for espionage.
On Thursday, a Moscow court sentenced former American paratrooper Michael Travis Leake to 13 years in prison for drug trafficking.
A U.N. working group said this month that Gershkovich’s detention on espionage charges was “arbitrary” and called for his immediate release.
While in prison, he communicated with friends and family through handwritten letters that reveal that he maintained a sense of humor and did not lose hope in the face of his situation.
At his first hearing on June 26, he spoke briefly to greet reporters and appeared smiling and cheerful, while revealing that his head had been completely shaved.
