Czech dissident changes plea
NZPA-Reuter Prague The Czechoslovak public prosecutor will today finish his case against four of Czechoslovakia’s best-known dissidents, including the prominent playwright, Yaclav Havel, accused of writing subversive propaganda or trying to smuggle it abroad.
Only one of the defendants, a former theatre director, Ota Omest, has pleaded guilty to damaging the interests of the State by using diplomats and banished Czechoslovak emigres in France and Italy to get articles criticising the Prague regime published abroad.
The other three, all of them signatories of the “Charter 77” human rights manifesto, have acknowledged they tried to get the banned articles printed outside Czechoslovakia but deny that they “subverted” State interests by doing so. Ornest, who is 64, who has been in custody since January 11, could spend up to 10 years in jail if convicted.
The authorities have kept all references to the charter out of the proceedings and maintain the trial is a case of subversion involving contacts between the dissidents and agents in the pay of foreign bodies, including the United States Central Intelligence Agency.
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Press, 19 October 1977, Page 8
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179Czech dissident changes plea Press, 19 October 1977, Page 8
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