The Soviet Union will be put on public “trial” at a European capital yet to be named, for “violations” of its own laws by the persistent persecution of Jewish culture and the Hebrew language, it was learned here today. An international commission, headed by former Israeli Attorney General Gideon Hausner, will assemble the evidence.
The commission was formed some time ago. Its membership and mission were disclosed when it was learned that the Soviets are going ahead with the trial of losif Begun, a 55-year-old Jewish engineer and an unofficial teacher of Hebrew in Moscow who faces a maximum sentence of 12 years’ imprisonment for alleged anti-Soviet activities.
According to a Tass report, the trial began today at Vladimir, 200 kilometers from Moscow. Earlier reports said the trial was scheduled to open tomorrow. Begun’s wife and his son Boris were reportedly on their way to Vladimir from Moscow in the hope of being admitted to the court.
Begun has already served prison sentences for Zionist activities. He was arrested in November, 1982 and held in solitary confinement pending trial. He has reportedly said he intends to use his trial as a forum on the “persecution of Jewish culture in the USSR,”
In addition to Hausner, the man who prosecuted Adolf Eichmann, the international commission consists of Telford Taylor, the American prosecutor at the Nurem burg war crimes trial; Prof. Alan Dershowitz of the Harvard Law School; Rita Hauser, former head of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights; and Arthur Goldberg, a former Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and former U.S. Ambassador to the UN.
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