The Sunday Observer reported today that Soviet authorities are preparing a show trial of Russian citizens, mostly Jewish–the biggest in the Soviet Union since 1968, when 17 intellectuals were accused of dissension after the invasion of Czechoslovakia. The trial, likely to be held in Leningrad next month, is connected with the arrest of 30 Soviet citizens alleged to have tried to hijack a Soviet plane at Leningrad airport to fly to Finland last June, the Observer said. Two leading Leningrad Jews, Grigory Vertlib, jurist, and Gillel Shur, engineer, have written to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet protesting the trial and the searches of other Leningrad Jews following the arrests. It is believed that the KGB, the Soviet secret police, had a hand in the alleged hijackings, the paper said. Realizing how desperate many Soviet Jews had become to leave the country, and seeing mounting applications for exit permits, the secret police are thought to have planted an agent provocateur–a Jew named B. Dymschits–and provoked the hijacking. The purpose of the trial appears to be to terrorize Jews and curb their desires to emigrate. Procurator General Andreyevich Rudenko has taken charge of legal preparations and investigations. Mr. Rudenko, a member of Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, was chief Soviet prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. It is feared that Jews will be tried on charges of attempting to seize state property, an offense punishable by death.
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