Hillel Shur, Kishinev Defendant, Says He Was Offered Bribe if He Admitted Guilt

Hillel Zalmanovich Shur, one of the nine Jewish defendants who went on trial in Kishinev yesterday, charged today that “the head of the investigation department, Pliakov, in the presence of the prosecutor, Pluektov, offered me a judicial bribe to take the guilt upon myself in exchange for being released on probation,” a Soviet Jewish emigre reported here today. Alexander Gittelsohn, who relocated in Israel in April, told Soviet Jewry “Commission of Inquiry” holding a day-long meeting at the Carnegie Endowment international Center that in a phone conversation today with the 35-year old defendant’s Israeli sister, Kreina Zalmanovna Shur, she told him that she had learned from friends in Riga that Shur was warned that if he did not admit to anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda he would be sentenced to five or six years in prison. Shur’s sister told Gittelsohn that her brother had replied “I refuse to have my fate decided by people who at the very beginning violate Soviet laws themselves. I refuse to take part in this trial.” Shur was also said to have declared: “I consider that my case is not under the jurisdiction of the Kishinev court. Not a single witness from Kishinev has been questioned in regard to my case.”