Avital Shcharansky has informed Soviet Jewish activists in the United States that her mother-in-law, lda Milgrom, has been granted permission to visit Soviet Jewish Prisoner of Conscience Anatoly Shcharansky in the Perm labor camp. The visit is scheduled for Monday, January 14.
Rabbi Avraham Weiss, chairman of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ), said he received a telephone call from Mrs. Shcharansky yesterday afternoon. She telephoned from Geneva where she reportedly met with members of the United States delegation to the arms talks with the Soviet Union. The SSSJ asserted that Soviet officials there had declined to meet with Mrs. Shcharansky.
Anatoly Shcharansky is serving a 13-year sentence after being convicted in 1978 on charges of spying for the United States. Last November, Soviet authorities told Milgrom that he had been transferred from a prison near Moscow to a labor camp in the Urals. Mrs. Shcharansky said last month that family sources had been informed Anatoly had been hospitalized, although Soviet authorities did not provide details of his illness.
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