Soviet Jews banished after placard protest

Press, 23 June 1978, Page 6

Soviet Jews banished after placard protest

I NZPA-Reuter Moscow Two Jewish activists, one of them a member of the “Helsinki" group, have received stiff sentences of internal exile in the latest trials of Soviet dissidents. Vladimir Slepak. aged 50, doyen of the Jewish emigration movement, was sentenced to serve five years exile in a remote part of the, Soviet Union after being convicted of “malicious) hooliganism." The second defendant, Ida Nudel, aged 47, was sen-1 tenced to four years exile on the same charge after a sep- ; arate trial. i Both w r ere alleged to have;: committed their offences by|l displaying placards from if the balconies of their Moscow apartments protesting! I against the refusal of the!; authorities to allow them to! go to Israel. Mr Slepak, an electrical ’ 1 engineer, has been trying tolj emigrate since 1970. He! joined the dissident “Hel-jt sinki” group, set up to|t monitor Soviet human-rights pledges, more than a year’t ago. t Last month the leader of It the group, Dr Yuri Orlov, I ‘ was sentenced to 12 years injs a labour camp and exile on't charges of agitating against |J the State. About 20 members ofig Helsinki groups in various I Soviet cities are in prison one labour camps awaiting trial 11 or serving sentences. c Dr Orlov's trial was 15 closed to all sympathisers 11 and relatives except his wife;p and sons. In the Slepak case s the authorities went further lr

and refused entry even to close relatives. Tt is a closed trial," a ; senior uniformed police, ! officer told journalists. News of the sentence i against Mr Slepak. the son ] of a veteran Bolshevik, was) given by his brother-in-law! (after he was summoned to; ! the court. At the end of the trial on! .Wednesday, journalists and; ■; Jewish sympathisers were (sprayed with water from a hose directed on them without warning from the court'house yard. Mr Slepak’s wife. Maria. ; arrested with him earlier!

this month, is due to stand trial on the same charge. | She is in hospital with a [stomach ulcer. Mrs Nudel, who had been (free pending trial, appeared [at the court with a bundle lof clothes in anticipation of ■ being arrested during the Shearing, which in fact happened. Friends said they doubted ■ she would appeal her sentence. In a final statement given to friends, Mrs Nudel said that the last seven years had been both "the hardest” and “the best” of her life, and she had “learned to walk tall as a woman and as a Jew." Mrs Nudel first asked to go to Israel in 1971 Photographers in civilian dress repeatedly took pictures of Western journalists outside the court. When the Westerners started to imitate the others, an angry police officer stopped them, saying: “They have the right, but not you.”