A Soviet Jewish woman, Meta Leikina, has been held incommunicado for eight months in a mental institution in Kazan in the Soviet Tartar Republic and is suffering from malnutrition and severe mental depression, according to information reaching her daughter, Anna Rosnovskaya, who lives in Israel. Details of the case were reported by Inez Weissman, president of the Long Island Committee for Soviet Jewry.
According to Weissman, the daughter learned of her mother’s condition from her sister in Moscow who only recently was allowed to visit Mrs. Leikina for the first time since her incarceration. The daughter reported that her mother’s weight was down to 100 pounds, that she was wracked by despair and wanted only to die. The medical committee at the mental institution which is supposed to consider her ease will not meet for another seven months.
Mrs. Leikina was given an indeterminate sentence after conviction at a secret trial for allegedly smuggling a viruses out of the Soviet Union. The charge was false, the court sat in camera and the accused was not permitted to attend her own trial, Weissman said.
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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.
