Jailed US reporter's defense appeals his arrest in Russia

MOSCOW (AP) — Lawyers representing an American reporter for The Wall Street Journal arrested in Russia on espionage charges have appealed his arrest, a court in Moscow announced Monday.

Evan Gershkovich, 31, was detained last week in Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth-largest city. It was the first time a U.S. correspondent had been detained on spying accusations since the Cold War. The Journal has said it “vehemently denies” the charges and demanded his release.

At a hearing Thursday, Moscow's Lefortovsky District court quickly ruled that Gershkovich would be kept behind bars for two months pending the investigation.

On Monday, the court reported that it has received an appeal against Gershkovich’s arrest that was filed by his defense, according to Russian news agencies. No date for a hearing on the appeal has been set yet.

Gershkovich was put in Moscow's Lefortovo prison, which dates from the czarist era and has been a terrifying symbol of repression since Soviet times. In the first report of his condition and prison circumstances, a Russian state prison monitor said Monday that Gershkovich was in a quarantine cell while he underwent medical checks, was in a double cell without a cellmate, was reading a book from a prison library, and had access to a TV, radio and refrigerator.

The Moscow-area prison monitor, Alexei Melnikov, wrote on the Telegram messaging app that the journalist hadn't complained about the prison conditions.

“At the time of the visit, he was cheerful. During the conversation there were a lot of jokes,” Melnikov wrote, without specifying when he saw the journalist. The monitor's report couldn't be independently verified.

Russia’s Federal Security Service, the top successor to the Soviet-era KGB that is known by the acronym FSB, accused Gershkovich of...