Aleksei Murzhenko, one of the two non-Jews involved in the 1970 Leningrad airplane hijack attempt by Jews desperate to leave the Soviet Union, has returned to his family in Kiev after serving a 14 year sentence in the strict regime labor camp near Perm in Siberia, the National Conference on Soviet Jewry reported today.
Another non-Jew, Yuri Federov, also convicted in the first Leningrad hijack trial, will be released next year after completing a 15 year sentence.
Murzhenko, 42, was convicted in 1970 of “treason”, “anti-Soviet agitation” and organizing the theft of “state property”–an aircraft — in an attempt together with Jewish refuseniks to fly to Israel. All of the Jews convicted have since completed their sentences.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
