Rust could be sent to labour colony

Press, 5 September 1987, Page 11

Rust could be sent to labour colony

NZPA-Reuter Moscow The West German teenager, Mathias Rust, is contemplating the prospect of eight years in a strict-regime labour camp as he faces judgment for landing a plane near Red Square. The prosecutor, Vladimir Andreyev, has asked the Soviet Supreme Court to find Rust guilty and sentence him to an eightyear term for violating international flight regulations. Judge Robert Tikhomirnov, who will announce the verdict, is also considering a prosecution demand that Rust, aged 19, receive concurrent terms of four years for malicious hooliganism and two years for illegally crossing the Soviet border. Mr Andreyev dismissed Rust’s argument that he flew to Moscow on a peace mission, saying the end did not justify the means. He underlined that Rust’s choice of landing spot bad touched a raw Soviet nerve. “What is Red Square for a Russian person, for our multinational country? It is a sacred place for us,” he said. He also contended that Rust had endangered people’s lives by seeking to land in central Moscow and had risked accidents in mid-air because 11 planes were in the air

in the vicinity of the capital’s Sheremetyevo airport as he flew past. Rust pleaded guilty on Wednesday to all three charges but said later that he felt innocent of hooliganism because he had taken great care in landing his plane.

Mr Andreyev came close to demanding the maximum sentence for Rust Soviet law provides for a term of up to 10 years for violating international flight rules, while a strict-regime camp is the second harshest type of labour colony. West Germany’s ruling centre-Right parties, the Christian Democrats and Christian Social Union, appealed to the Supreme Court not to sentence Rust to eight years and to recognise that his flight was “a dumb juvenile stunt by a young scatterbrain.”

Mr Andreyev’s toughly-worded final statement on Thursday was a reminder that the Soviet authorities have regarded Rust’s flight as anything but a light affair.

It provoked an upheaval in the Soviet military unseen since the 1950 s and which led to the removal of the former Defence Minister, Sergei Sokolov, and air defence chief Alexander Koldunov. Diplomats said some Soviet officers had also lost their