Reports in the Soviet press that the three leaders of the Jewish religious community in Leningrad were arrested and sentenced because they transmitted “espionage material” to Israeli Embassy officers during religious services were officially termed here today as being “completely without foundation.” (The Soviet authorities also arrested three Jewish religious leaders in Moscow.)
The Israeli diplomats named in the Soviet newspaper Leningradskaya Pravda, organ of the Communist Party in Leningrad, are Yaacov Sharett, son of the former Israeli Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Moshe Sharett; and Eliahu Hazan, formerly a member of Israel’s Embassy staff at Moscow. The latter was arrested by Soviet authorities at Odessa in 1957, and expelled from the Soviet Union. Mr. Sharett was arrested at Riga last summer and also ordered to leave the USSR.
Mr. Sharett said here today that, during his tenure in Moscow, he had met hundreds of Jews at the Moscow synagogue, but he does not recall the names of the three Jews arrested in Leningrad. His only “conversation” with Jews he met, Mr. Sharett said, consisted of the traditional greeting, “Shalom Aleichem,” which usually drew the customary “Shalom” in response. The espionage charges against himself and Mr. Hazan, Mr. Sharett said, are “fantastic.”
Other officials here today said the Soviet allegations in both expulsion cases were “groundless.” Observers here speculate that the charges against the Russian Jews and the linking of those men with Mr. Sharett and Mr. Hazan may have been intended by Soviet authorities to counter-balance espionage cases recently brought here against Israelis charged with handing secret information to an unnamed “foreign power.”
The Israel Foreign Ministry, it was said, is not likely to respond to the allegations in the Leningrad newspaper, unless it is followed by a formal note from the Soviet Union. No such formal note has been received by Israel from the Soviet Union. The Israel Embassy in Moscow has been requested to send to the Foreign Ministry the complete text of the article in the Leningradskaya Pravda.
It was pointed out that, neither at the time of Mr. Hazan’s expulsion, nor when Mr. Sharett was ordered out of the Soviet Union, did the Soviet Government connect them in any way with the Jews since arrested and sentenced at Leningrad. Nor, it was pointed out here, did the Soviet Government ever make diplomatic representations or complaints to the Israel Government, charging any such connections either against Mr. Sharett or against Mr. Hazan.
According to the Leningrad newspaper, the three Leningrad Jewish leaders were convicted after 20 witnesses testified that they had transmitted “espionage material” to the two Israelis during religious services in the Leningrad synagogue. The Leningrad newspaper charged that the three Jews sentenced there had distributed “anti-Soviet literature,” presumably Zionist pamphlets printed in Israel. The three men convicted at Leningrad are G.R. Pechersky, 60, sentenced to 12 years; N. A. Kaganov, sentenced to seven years; and E.S. Dynkin, 70, given a four-year prison term.
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