On 30 January 1980, Gintautas Ješmantas was arrested in Vilnius. He is charged with working for the Alma Mater periodical (CCE 53.31 [7]).
Ješmantas graduated from Vilnius Teachers Training Institute where he specialized in Lithuanian Studies. He worked in the editorial office of the journal Kommunist, from which he was dismissed at the beginning of the 1970s, after he left (or was expelled from) the Party.
From that moment until his arrest Ješmantas worked as a bibliographer in the Palace of Books.
*
On 20 May 1980, Vytautas Abrutis was arrested in Moscow.
Currently held in the Vilnius KGB Prison, he has been charged under Article 199-1 (Lithuanian SSR Criminal Code = Article 190-1, RSFSR Code). The investigator in his case is Ju. Vilutis.
In his final year at secondary school, Abrutis (b. 1952) was questioned by the KGB because he had hung the flag of pre-war Lithuania from the school building. During his Army service, under pressure from the Special Section, he wrote a declaration renouncing his convictions.
After returning home Abrutis worked as a restorer at the Lithuanian SSR Restoration Trust. In 1979 he and his wife Edita Abrutiene renounced their Soviet citizenship and applied to emigrate to the United States. They received permission to emigrate not long before Abrutis’s arrest.
*
On 8 April 1980, a search was carried out at the Abrutis home.
It was conducted by officials of the “Section for Combating Pilfering of Socialist Property & Speculation” (OBKhSS); the reason for the search is unknown. Many documents in Russian and a typewriter were confiscated. On 9 April 1980, Abrutis travelled to Moscow, where he met foreign journalists.
His family were informed of Abrutis’s arrest only a week later.
Edita Abrutiene, who had gone to Moscow to search for her husband, was detained on 27 May at the city’s Belorussky Rail Station and searched. Her relatives informed Abrutiene that if she, too, were arrested they would not assume responsibility for the couple’s six-year-old child.
*
In the middle of May, flowers were laid on the square in Kaunas where Romas Kalanta burnt himself to death in 1972 (CCE 26.11, CCE 27.3). Aurelia Užleistaite, Loreta Užleistaite, Vladas Kukulskis, Laisve Vaitiekunaite and Paulius Vaitiekunas were arrested for this behaviour and all five were charged with hooliganism.
*
On 11 July 1980, Jadvyga Stanelyte was arrested in Vilnius. The investigator in her case is Jucys.
*
The following were interrogated in connection with the case of Vitkauskaite (CCE 56.19-1) and Navickaite (CCE 56.19-1): the priest Albinas Deltuva on 29 May 1980, Bernadeta Mališkaite on 2 June, Gene Laukaite and Birute Briliute on 23 June, and Ona Kavaliauskaite on 26 June.
*
In June 1980, Sigitas Tamkevicius, a member of the Catholic Committee, was twice summoned to Moscow by Investigator Kapayev in connection with the case of Tatyana Velikanova (CCE 54.1-1). He did not go.
*
In the case of Povilas Peceliunas (his surname was misspelt in CCE 55.6, CCE 56.18), his fiancée Danute Keršiute (CCE 55.6, CCE 56.18) has been constantly summoned for interrogation.
*
Povilas Peceliunas (1928-1990)
*
At an interrogation on 14 December 1979 an attempt was made to take her fingerprints.
Keršiute refused to undergo a dactyloscopy and, when Major Urbonas tried to make her submit, she began to resist him. Then a charge was made out against her, alleging that Keršiute had “behaved like a hooligan” during the interrogation and had kicked one of the KGB officials.
On 12 June 1980, a search was carried out at the home of Keršiute’s sister.
On 24 June Investigator Marcinkevičius summoned Keršiute for questioning. Once again the investigator tried to make her undergo a fingerprint test. When Keršiute resisted again, Marcinkevičius summoned a police detail. The policemen took Keršiute to the preliminary detention cells, where she was beaten up in the presence of Marcinkevičius.
Afterwards, on the order of a judge of the Vilnius October district, Keršiute was jailed for 15 days for “hooliganism”.
*
At the beginning of July 1980, the latest term of administrative surveillance imposed on former political prisoner Vladas Sakalys (CCE 54.18) came to an end. In mid-July his telephone was cut off.
There were rumours that Sakalys would soon be arrested in connection with the case of Terleckas and Sasnauskas. In the second half of July Sakalys disappeared. After that, notices were put up in Vilnius for a while, seeking information on the whereabouts of the “highly dangerous recidivist Sakalys (Vladas)” Some persons searched the system of underground passages in the city centre.
At the end of July, foreign radio-stations announced that Sakalys had crossed the Soviet-Finnish border and, without applying to the Finnish authorities (the USSR has an extradition agreement with Finland), crossed the entire country to ask for political asylum in Sweden.
=====================================
A Chronicle of Current Events 