Mark Nashpitz, the Moscow Jewish activist arrested June 16, will go on trial Aug. 2 on unreported charges, according to the National Conference on Soviet Jewry. Nashpitz is a friend of Gavriel Shapiro, the activist sentenced Wednesday to one year’s corrective labor, and was best man at Shapiro’s June 8 wedding. Nashpitz has been imprisoned since his arrest, whereas Shapiro was allowed to live at home.
The Conference also said that Lazar Liubarsky of Rostov, an activist arrested July 18, has been charged with “slander of the Soviet system” under Article 191 of the Russian Criminal Code. The Conference added that Liubarsky’s home was searched and that his wife was not allowed to enter it for two days.
The Conference also reported that Clive Barnes, the British-born dance and drama critic of the New York Times; David Bar-Illan, the Israeli pianist; Jeff Kee of the office of Assemblyman Andrew Stein (D.N.Y.), and Jerry Goodman, executive director of the Conference, met for 90 minutes Friday in Washington with State Department officials on the situation of Valery Panov. Goodman called the meeting “very satisfactory. . .helpful. . .constructive” and reported that the officials said they would “do whatever they could for Mr. Panov within the political limitations of the situation.”
Panov was fired in April from the Kirov Ballet Company of Leningrad, for which he was a leading dancer, because he had applied for a visa to Israel. The Jewish star, who is 33, has been reported by friends to be “desperate” and “deteriorating.”
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