About 100 persons demonstrated across from the Soviet Embassy here today to mark the 11th anniversary of the Leningrad hijack arrests and to protest the continued imprisonment of the last two defendants, Yuri Federov and Alexei Murzhenko, both non-Jews. The demonstration also protested reports from the USSR that Viktor Brailovsky, a leading Soviet Jewish activist, would go on trial Wednesday. (See story on Pg. 4)
The demonstration was sponsored by the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington; the National Conference on Soviet Jewry; and the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council (NJCRAC), which is holding an executive board meeting here today. Bennett Yanowitz, chairman of NJCRAC, and Jacqueline Levine, of the NCSJ, went to the Soviet Embassy to present a statement about Brailovsky and the Leningrad prisoners. An Embassy duty officer refused to accept the statement but said he was familiar with the cases and would transmit their remarks to his superiors at the Embassy.
NJCRAC also sent a telegram to President Reagan today urging that the U.S. “do all that it can” to help Brailovsky and to convince the Soviet Union to release him and permit him and his family to emigrate.
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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.
