The trial of Soviet Jewish activist Viktor Brailovsky will open Wednesday in the Lublinsky Peoples Court in Moscow at 10 a.m. Moscow time. This information was received by telephone from Moscow yesterday by Genya Intrator, chairman of the Canadian Committe for Soviet Jewry.
Brailovsky, a cybernetist, is charged with crimes against the State and defaming the Soviet Union and its social system. Vladimir Prestin, a 10 year refusenik, has been summoned to appear as a witness. According to Intrator, Brailovsky’s wife Irina was told by the judge that he was offered defense counsel selected by the Moscow College of Advocates but that he had refused. She has not been permitted to see her husband who remains in jail pending trial.
Intrator was also told that Boris Chernobylsky, a Jewish radio engineer who has been seeking permission to emigrate with his wife and two daughters since 1974, now faces charges under Art. 91 of the Criminal Code of resisting authority and disturbing public order. The penalty is up to three years’ imprisonment. Chernobylsky was arrested after an altercation with plain clothes police who had ordered a group of 40 Jews to leave a picnic ground at Palikh.
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