Soviet Jewish refusenik Bezvalel Shalolashvili was sentenced Tuesday to a one-year prison term for “draft evasion” after a two-day trial, the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ) reported here.
The 22-year old Tbilisi student, arrested last month, asserted that he had never received his draft notice. The SSSJ said that the KGB has told Shalolashvili’s brother, Yitzhak, that “the charge was in retaliation for the latter’s efforts to prevent the official destruction of the Ashkenazic synagogue in Tbilisi.”
The U.S. Congress was informed last February of reported plans by the Soviet authorities to bulldoze one of the few remaining synagogues in the Soviet Union in order to build a public square in its place. The Tbilisi Jewish community is estimated at 20,000.
Shalolashvili and his family first applied to emigrate in April, 1985, and their application was refused last August without any explanation.
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