<<No 21 : 11 September 1971>>

Yakut ASSR (Soviet Far East)

The trial of Vladimir Dremlyuga, indicted for a second time under Article 190-1 (RSFSR Criminal Code), took place in late August at an assizes session of the Yakut ASSR Supreme Court in the town of Lensk, on penal institution territory. The court sentenced Dremlyuga [¹] to three years of strict-regime camps.

Defence counsel Kulginsky (of Yakutsk), who had been engaged by relatives of the accused, was not present at the trial; another lawyer, whose name is unknown, was sent in his place.

An attempt to engage a lawyer in Moscow had met with no success, as permission had been refused by the Moscow Collegium of Lawyers (CCE 20.11 [13]).

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25 August marked the end of the three-year term in the camps to which Dremlyuga was sentenced for taking part in the 25 August 1968 demonstration in Red Square (CCE 3.3).

During these three years he has received only one parcel and a few letters. His mother, an aged invalid, has been unable to make the journey to visit him, while contacts with friends have been blocked by the camp administration. According to unconfirmed reports, about forty witnesses – all fellow prisoners of Dremlyuga – were called at the trial, and testified that he had expressed “slanderous fabrications”.

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NOTES

1. On Dremlyuga, see CCE 4.1, CCE 21.1, CCE 32.19 and Name Index. (He left the USSR in 1974.)
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