Asher Andrei, a resident of the Rumanian capital, has been sentenced to death here on a charge of accepting bribes. All his belongings have been confiscated. He has appealed against the death sentence but the date of the hearing has not yet been set. There are no further details on the nature of the charges. Andrei, a 63-year-old chemist, is married and has a married son living in Rumania. A daughter lives with her husband and children in Israel. Andrei has not applied to emigrate from Rumania.
The report of Andrei’s sentence arrived less than a week after President Ford asked Congress to act favorably on a trade agreement with Rumania. The agreement was expects to provide an initial legislative test of the restrictions in the 1974 trade act which link U.S. trade benefits to freer emigration from Communist countries. That law contains amendments from Sen. Henry Jackson (D. Wash.) and Rep. Charles Vanik (D. O.) providing such a linkage and aimed at compelling the Soviet Union to allow more Jews and other nationals to emigrate.
In the negotiations in Bucharest earlier this month, the Rumanian officials cited Rumania’s relatively liberal emigration policy, under which nearly 400,000 Rumanian Jews emigrate since the end of World War II, mostly to Israel.
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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.
