Natalia Shcharansky, the wife of Anatoly Shcharansky, the Soviet Jewish activist who faces possible death on charges of treason, visited the Soviet Mission to the UN yesterday in an attempt to confront Soviet officials with a demand for her husband’s release, but was rebuffed by Mission officials.
At the time, Mrs. Shcharansky, accompanied by a “Freedom Squad,” issued a public appeal to President Carter to immediately intervene on behalf of her husband, held incommunicado in a Moscow prison since March. With her was Bronx Borough President Robert Abrams, chairman, and other officials of the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry which is sponsoring her visit to New York.
Mrs. Shcharansky said: “Anatoly must not come to trial. If that occurs, it is a certainty that other activists working for the human rights of Jews and freer emigration will follow him into the courtroom, and this will represent a severe blow to the Soviet Jewry movement inside the USSR.”
She said further: “In their determination to build an iron-clad case against my husband, Soviet officials at the very highest level are interrogating Soviet Jews in cities across the Soviet Union for as much as eight and ten hours at a time. With every passing hour Anatoly’s situation becomes more perilous. My husband has committed no crime. If he is to be free, the full force of world public opinion, and the intervention of world leaders concerned with human rights, must be brought to bear immediately.”
Mrs. Shcharansky has visited nearly a score of countries since her husband was arrested on March 15 and accused of treason. She will confer here with top public officials and civic and religious leaders and also meet with community organizations throughout the city that have been active in the Soviet Jewry movement. Her husband, a 29-year-old computer specialist, was arrested after accusations in the Soviet press that he and other Jewish activists were agents of the CIA–an allegation that has been publicly refuted by President Carter.
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