SERGEI KOVALEV Russia denies trial report

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34041, 3 January 1976, Page 15

SERGEI KOVALEV Russia denies trial report

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) MOSCOW, January 2. The Soviet Union has denied allegations that the recent trial of a leading Russian dissident was unfair, and says that reports reaching the West of political and religious persecution are “fantastic lies.”

The First Deputy Minister of Justice (Mr Alexander Sukharev) insists that Sergei Kovalev was not tried for his views, but for “hostile acts aimed at undermining the Soviet Union.” Kovalev, a close associate of the Nobel Peace Prize Laureat, Professor Andrei Sakharov, was sentenced on December 12 to 10 years in a labour camp, followed by exile, after being found guilty, in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.

As co-author of the underground journal on political dissent in the Soviet Union, the “Chronicle of Current Events,” Kovalev was considered a central figure in the dissident community. Mr Sukharev has denied accusations made in Oslo by Dr Sakharov’s wife that court procedure was violated at the trial: in an interview with the weekly, “New Times,” published in advance by the official news agency, Tass, he says that the trial was open, and that the correct procedure was observed. “Kovalev was given the constitutional right to defence, and he used this right extensively,” Mr Sukharev is quoted as saying. “Although during the trial he seriously complicated the Court’s work through his actions, his case was examined carefully, deeply, and objectively. “A great number of documents and other evidence confirming Kovalev’s criminal anti-State activities were analysed and checked.”

Apparently referring to the exclusion from the courtroom of Dr Sakharov and several friends of'the accused, Mr Sukharev said that the Court’s seating capacity had limited the number of people able to attend.

The Deputy Minister went on to condemn “anti-Soviet propaganda in the West about people alleged to have been imprisoned without trial in Russia or condemned for their political or religious views. “There are many lists of this kind now circulating in the West, thanks to Kovalev and the like—lists containing fantastic lies,” he is quoted as saying.