Teacher Admits Subversion

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30811, 24 July 1965, Page 15

Teacher Admits Subversion

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright) MOSCOW, July 23. Gerald Brooke, the British college lecturer on trial in Moscow on charges of anti-Soviet subversion, is expected to be sentenced today. The crime he is accused of —passing subversive literature—carries a maximum sentence of seven years’ gaol or five years in a labour camp. In the crowded courtroom yesterday the 28-year-old Londoner confessed his guilt. “I recognise my guilt in connexion with all the

charges,” he told the prosecution. Brooke was arrested three months ago during a police raid on a Moscow apartment. Since then he has been in Moscow’s Lubyanka Prison, near Red Square. Soviet authorities used the

- trial as a platform to attack a Russian emigre organ- ! isation, which it claimed as- > signed Brooke on his Moscow . mission. The prosecution i also accused the British Em- , bassy in Moscow of having links with the organisation. > Six hundred Russian spec-

tatoi's packed the courtroom a theatre converted for the occasion. Brooke stood palefaced under the glare of television lights. The indictment took 40 minutes to read. Mr Brooke came to Moscow at the head of a group of visiting British students. The prosecution claimed that he was in fact recruited by the emigre organisation, the National Labour Alliance, and told to contact a young doctor named Yury Konstantinov. He was to hand to Konstantinov documents and equipment to print anti-Soviet propaganda. But it was Konstantinov who gave him away, the indictment said. For his action Konstahtinov was described as “a patriot of the Fatherland.”

New Bolts.—-The 80 Hastings transport aircraft flying with the R.A.F. are to have the bolts securing their elevator controls replaced immediately, says the "Guardian." —London, July 23.