Judy Silver Shapiro said today she had been informed that her husband, Gavriel Shapiro, was arrested Tuesday morning, the day he had been scheduled to begin a one-year sentence of “corrective labor,” set after he was convicted on charges of draft evasion. The “corrective labor” sentence permits convicted defendants to remain at home while doing work specified by Soviet authorities. Shapiro is living with his parents in their Moscow home. Mrs. Shapiro said she learned of the new arrest in a telephone conversation with her husband’s parents.
She said she was told that Gavriel was arrested after his parents had left for work. When he did not come home Tuesday evening, his parents went to a local militia office where they learned their son had been re-arrested and that he had been taken to a prison 60 miles from Moscow. The militia declined to say why Shapiro had been arrested again, Mrs. Shapiro said.
She said also that she was planning to go to Washington shortly in another effort to get an exit visa for Moscow. She wants to be there Nov. 1 which is the re-scheduled date for a civil wedding between her and Gavriel. They were married earlier this year in a religious ceremony, which Soviet authorities do not recognize as a valid marriage rite.
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