The National Conference on Soviet Jewry has learned that another Jewish emigration activist, the second in two weeks, has been convicted in the Soviet Union. Evgeny Lein, a 42-year-old doctor of engineering, was sentenced in a Leningrad court to two years of exile at hard labor for allegedly “resisting a representative of authority.”
Lein was held in prison since his arrest on May 17. On that day he had attended a seminar on Jewish history in a private apartment, when uniformed policemen and KGB agents burst in and arrested several participants, including Lein. He was accused of “beating a policeman.”
Lein defended himself at his one-day trial yesterday, attended by about 50 people. According to activists, the procurator’s witnesses did not succeed in proving the charge. It was shown that an injury to the policeman’s leg could not have been inflicted inside an apartment. Furthermore, a medical statement produced by the procurator was written 20 days after the incident was to have occurred. Three men who wished to testify on Lein’s behalf were not permitted to do so by the judge because of their friendship for the defendant.
Irina Lein, at the time of her husband’s arrest, called it a “tactic in the KGB tyranny now being waged against Jewish refuseniks and others involved in the struggle for Jewish self-awareness.” The Lein family has been denied emigration to Israel since 1978.
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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.
