Man who sued K.G.B. sent to jail for year

Press, 12 March 1982, Page 6

Man who sued K.G.B. sent to jail for year

NZPA-Reuter Moscow Viktor Tomachinsky, the first man to bring a civil action against the K.G.B. security police for damages, was tried in the basement of a block of flats yesterday and sentenced to a year in jail, his wife has said. Mr Tomachinsky. a 36-year-old mechanic, was arrested last December, hours

after he appeared in the Moscow City Court to claim 13,400 roubles ($NZ25,000) compensation from the K.G.B. He has been in custody since then and, according to his wife, spent several weeks in special punishment cells. The prosecution accused him of refusing to work — a crime known under Soviet law as parasitism. About 20 friends and relatives were led from a district courtroom, where the trial was due to begin yesterday, and directed across a snowcovered yard to a nearby apartment block. They were ushered down a dimly lit staircase, to the door of a basement room. Two police officials guarding the door told them the room was full and only Mr Tomachinsky’s wife, Lena, would be allowed in to give evidence.

.Mrs Tomachinsky, who is 30, said at the end of the eight-hour trial: “It was a ni^itmare. 1 cannot conceive

how those proceedings in that dingy little room can be called a trial.” She said her husband looked thinner but otherwise seemed fairly healthy and made a long speech to the court in his defence.

Mr Tomachinsky, who describes himself as “a brave and merry man,” will also serve five years exile from Moscow.

In his legal action last December, he charged that the K.G.B. had not kept a promise it had made early last year to grant him and his family a visa to emigrate. His claim was based on money he- calculated he. would have earned if he had been allowed to work as a mechanic in the United States.

The court ruled that it had ho authority to ..pass judgment in the case. Mr Tomachinsky. declared afterwards that he would drop the action and look for other ways to get his visa. It