A "circus"trial threatens dissidents
The sign outside the dingy, heavily guarded building in southwestern Moscow proclaimed: PEOPLE'S COURT. But what went on inside it last week was a caricature of justice. After four days of carefully rigged proceedings, a panel of three judges handed down the expected verdict: Yuri Orlov, a leading Soviet dissident who had been held incommunicado for more than 15 months, was found guilty of "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda." The 53-year-old physicist was then sentenced to seven years in a labor camp, to be followed by five years of exile in a remote part of the Soviet...
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