Isaac Shkolnik’s appeal against his 10-year prison sentence is scheduled to be heard today by the Supreme Court of the Ukrainian SSR. But up to now he has been unable to find a lawyer to take his case, Jewish sources in the Soviet Union reported today.
Shkolnik was sentenced by a military tribunal, in Vinnetsa April 10 on charges of spying for Israel and anti-Soviet propaganda. He was given five years on each count at a strict regime labor camp. The sentence was the harshest meted out to a Jewish activist since the Dec. 1970 Leningrad hijack trial. Shkolnik’s defense counsel, Nikolai Makarenko, withdrew from the case after advising his client not to appeal.
Makarenko had reportedly persuaded Shkolnik to confess to the charges on the threat of the death penalty if he refused. Shkolnik’s wife, Feige, has been trying desperately to find a new lawyer, the sources said, so far without success. She has appealed for help to the chairman of the Supreme Court, a judge surnamed Smirnov, but has had no reply from him.
Mrs. Shkolnik was permitted to visit her husband in prison on April 12 on condition that they would not discuss the trial or the appeal. When she mentioned the trial to her husband the guards separated them. They said they had strict orders not to permit any conversation about Shkolnik’s trial which was held in a closed courtroom. Mrs. Shkolnik said later that she found her husband very depressed.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
