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…sharansky Arrested

March 16, 1977
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Anatoly Sharansky, one of the Soviet Jewish activists who was recently accused in an Izvestia article of working with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), was seized by eight secret police today as he was accompanying two American reporters from the apartment building where he had been staying, according to the National Conference on Soviet Jewry. His immediate whereabouts could not be learned, according to a report from Moscow to the NCSJ.

Sharansky, 29, a member of a group monitoring Soviet implementation of the human rights sections of the Helsinki agreement, was talking to the reporters about the release of Dr. Mikhail Stern when the police moved in. The activist has been under close surveillance by the secret police as he moved about the city. While police held back the reporters. Sharansky was pushed into a waiting car.

Sharansky, together with Vladimir Slepak in whose apartment he had been staying and who had also been accused of working with the CIA, was one of 250 signers of a statement several days ago which warned that anti-Jewish prejudice is ready to erupt in the Soviet Union. Slepak was also one of the signers.

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