press freedom | in English

#FreeThePress: in conversation with Alsu Kurmasheva and Omar Radi

17:00 - 17:50 saturday 12/04/2025 - Teatro del Pavone

This session will be live-streamed and on-demand

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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.