More strife for dissident?

Press, 28 February 1980, Page 9

More strife for dissident?

NZPA-Reuter Geneva The Soviet Union plans to expel the banished physicist, Andrei Sakharov, from its Academy of Sciences next month as part of a campaign against dissidents before the Moscow Olympics, Soviet emigres have said. The emigres told a press conference called by ■ the London-based human rights organisation, Amnesty International, that Soviet authorities were planning to clear Moscow of dissenters before the July Olympics. Dr Sakharov, winner of the Nobel Prize for peace was banished to the Volga city of Gorky and stripped of his State honours on January 22. An Amnesty official, Clayton Yeo, said the organisation was focusing on the Soviet Union as it had on Argentina before the 1978 football World Cup. But instead of making concessions to world opinion, Soviet authorities were arresting more dissidents. Dr Sakharov has made a fresh call to Soviet authorities to put him on open trial. . , The 58-year-old scientist said in a statement read out by his wife in Moscow that he was ready to stand before an open court “knowing that in a just State, only a court can determine measures and .form of punishment.” ' When he was banished he was officially accused of subversive activities against the State, but no formal charge has been brought against him.