Swedish police guard two defectors

Press, 15 August 1984, Page 10

Swedish police guard two defectors

NZPA-Reuter Stockholm The Swedish police were yesterday guarding a former deputy Justice Minister and his pop-singer wife from the Soviet Baltic republic of Estonia after they defected to the West while on an official trip to Finland. The Swedish State radio identified the couple as Leila Miller, aged 22, and her husband, a 26-year-old former deputy Justice Minister in the Estonian Government 1 called Valdo Randpere. The police declined to comment on the defectors’ names but confirmed their occupations and said the authorities were under the impression that the defector was still a deputy Justice Minister when he left Estonia.

“It is all a bit academic really as he is quite obviously a former Deputy Minister now,” a police spokesman said. ~ Estonian emigres in Stockholm said the couple travelled to the eastern Finnish town of Kotka earlier this month as official delegates to a Baltic celebration attended by several other high-ranking Estonians. They fled by ferry to Sweden which, unlike Finland, never hands back Soviet defectors. They are now in hiding. The emigres said they had left a baby daughter in Estonia. Sweden, with about 20,000 Estonian emigres, appears determined that the defection should not affect relations with Moscow and has said it is a police, not a Government, matter.