Mrs. Avital Sharansky, wife of Soviet Jewish activist Anatoly Sharansky, came to the United Nations today to urge the world body to intervene with Soviet authorities on behalf of her husband. Escorted by Chaim Herzog, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Mrs. Sharansky met with Undersecretary General William Buffum.
She gave him a letter addressed to Secretary General Kurt Waldheim which said: “I humbly beg of you to save my husband and let him rejoin me. All I ask as a simple citizen of the world is to enjoy the basic human right to be reunited with my husband in a place of our choice. I ask no more than this from life.”
In the letter, she said that her husband is presently in Lefortovo Prison in Moscow “where he is being held on false accusations while I live in Israel.” Sharansky was arrested last week and is being threatened with charges of treason and espionage.
Mrs. Sharansky, 26, emigrated to Israel in June. 1974, only a day after her marriage to the 29-year-old mathematician. “What do we ask?” she wrote Waldheim. “Only to live in peace and privacy in our country which is our right according to the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights–1948 to which the Soviet Union was a signator.”
At an impromptu press conference after the meeting with Buffum. Herzog told reporters that “the UN is being very helpful” in Sharansky’s case, but he did not elaborate. He added that Israel’s experience with the UN in this matter had been “very positive.” Mrs. Sharansky’s brother. Mikhail Shteiglitz, accompanied her to the meeting with Buffum. Mrs. Sharansky told reporters that her husband wants to live in Israel because he is Jewish and this is the reason he was arrested.
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