Some thirty persons gathered across from the Soviet Embassy here yesterday to highlight the fourth anniversary of the imprisonment of Soviet Jewish activist Vladimir Slepak. Sponsored by the Washington Committee for Soviet Jewry, the group presented a petition with hundreds of signatures to a Soviet official at the gates of the embassy appealing to Soviet authorities to release Slepak. But the official who spoke briefly with some members of the group said that he could not accept the petition and that the matter should be handled through the State Department.
Slepak is serving a five year sentence in internal exile in Siberia, and according to the organizers of the rally, his crime was hanging a banner from his window which read, “Let Us Out To Our Son In Israel.”
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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.