Orlov sentence subverts Helsinki pact — Carter

Press, 22 May 1978, Page 8

Orlov sentence subverts Helsinki pact — Carter

NZPA-Reuter Washington ’ President Jimmy Carter < has criticised the severity of I a seven-year prison sentence i on the Russian dissident, i Yuri Orlov, leader of a i human-rights group in the i Soviet Union. Dr Orlov, a physicist and I founder of the Helsinki I groups set up to monitor I Soviet action on human ' rights, was sentenced in a < Moscow court last week to 1 seven years in a labour I camp plus five of internal exile for anti-Soviet agita- ' tion and propaganda. In a question and answer]! session with news editors in

Washington, the President said: “We are deeply concerned about this action by the Soviet Union, which in my opinion subverts the i spirit of the Helsinki agreement concerning human rights. “We are concerned about the severity of the sentence, the secrecy of the trial and the apparent abuse that Mrs; Orlov suffered during the conduct of the trial.” the! United States has protested to the Soviet Union. A court in the Soviet! Georgian capital of Tbilisi, has ordered Zviad Gamsak • Ihurdia, a writer, and musi-l cologist Merab Kostava,

both 39, to serve three years! in a labour cp and two! years in exile for carrying out agitation and propaganda against the State. Reporting on the Tbilisi trial, the official Tass news agency has said the two men pleaded guilty and admitted disseminating slan-1 der about the State. Because, of their admissions the pros-1 (ecution had asked for lenient ! sentences, it said. But a dissident leader, An jdrei Sakharov, said he had (been told Gamsakhurdia and! | made a statement in court ' insisting on his “innocence 'from the moral point of view.”