Confirmation that Jewish activist Gavriel Shapiro was arrested at Moscow Airport yesterday was reported by the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry today following telephone conversations with sources in the Russian capital. Shapiro, 27, was said to be held at the Moor Prison where he will be interrogated for three days while subsisting on a bread-and-sugar diet, the SSSJ reported. They said official charges against him will reportedly follow the interrogation. Shapiro is presumed to have been arrested for evading a draft callup. He was married to Judy Silver, a Cincinnati, Ohio social worker, in an Orthodox ceremony at his home in Moscow last Thursday.
Mrs. Shapiro, whose Russian visa expired yesterday, arrived at Kennedy International Airport this afternoon. She said Soviet authorities would not grant her a civil marriage until Aug. 30 and that the “hostile” atmosphere in Moscow prevented her from obtaining a visa extension until that date. She said that at one point her application was denied “because it omitted my middle name, Bess.” The attempt to bar Shapiro from leaving Russia because of alleged security reasons is a fabrication, his bride charged. She said the “ex-chemical engineer” has been involved in nothing but “water purification.” Mrs. Shapiro, accompanied at the news conference by Rep. James H, Scheuer (D. NY), appeared distraught and was, in the words of an SSSJ official, “living on adrenalin at this point.” Mrs. Shapiro was to return to Cincinnati for a rest and then seek meetings with President Nixon and with Soviet Embassy officials.
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