After a five hour search of his apartment last Friday, leading Jewish activist Dr. Isai Goldstein from Tbilisi has been told to report today to the KGB for arrest on charges of “treason by reason of spying,” the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry reported today.
Goldstein, a 27-year-old physicist, refused an exit visa to Israel for 14 years, could face execution, the SSSJ said. The arrest was termed by the SSSJ “a frightening display of Mikhail Gorbachev’s emergence into a new Stalin. This is the fourth arrest of a Russian-Jewish activist within the past month.”
According to the SSSJ, Goldstein, his family and brother belonged to an unofficial musical group called Phantom. It is comprised of refuseniks and human rights activists. Eight other members of the group were detained Friday as well, but evidently only Goldstein and human rights campaigner Edward Gudeva are charged with treason. KGB Colonel Marion Nashivili accused Goldstein of being in illegal contact with foreign diplomats, correspondents and tourists, the SSSJ reported.
Meanwhile, the SSSJ also reported that Dan Shapiro, a Moscow Hebrew teacher, has received a two-year suspended sentence for “anti-Soviet slander.” The Soviet Union’s news agency, Tass, claimed that the trial was open, but supporters of Shapiro and Western reporters were barred entrance to the courthouse by the KGB.
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