SHCHARANSKY WINS FREEDOM IN BERLIN IN PRISON TRADE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000606090005-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 27, 2010
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: February 12, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/27: CIA-RDP90-00552R000606090005-7
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ARTICLE f1P1ED
ON PAGE ~,I
SHCHARANSKY WINS
FREEDOM 1N BERLIN
IN PRISONER TRADE
NEW YORK TIMES
12 February 1986
"President Reagan and others
worked and prayed for many years for
this," Mr Burt was said to have told!
Vir. Shcharansky.
Mr. Shcharansky, who repeatedly
expressed his thanks at being freed,
was whisked through West Berlin in a
convoy and, after a short flight to
Frankfurt, was reunited with his wife,
Avital
.
By JAMES M. MARKHAM Fearing that Soviet and East Ger-
Specisi to The New York Times man officials might oblige Mr.
WEST BERLIN, Feb. 11 - Anatoly Shcharansky to cross the bridge to-
B. Shcharansky, the human rights ac- gether with the three men accused of
tivist and campaigner for the right of being NATO agents, and thus visually
Jews to emigrate from the Soviet buttress the Soviet case that Mr.
Union, was freed here today after eight Shcharansky was a Central Intelli-
years in a Soviet labor camp. gene Agency spy, Unit States diplo-
Wearing a fur hat, an oversize black mats a eci to block the view for
overcoat and baggy trousers, Mr. photographers by parking two vans
Shcharansky, 38 years old, walked en is air tote r e.
across a snow-covered stretch of ut to t e Americans surprise, Wolf-
bridge and threaded his way past two gang Vogel, an East German lawyer
parked United States vans to freedom. who negotiated the exchange for the
Within hours, he had been reunited Warsaw Pact, agreed to have Mr.
with the wife, whom he had not seen Shcharansky taken first and alone in
since 1974, and flown to a hero's wel- the lawyer's gold Mercedes-Benz from
come in Israel. the Potsdam side to the middle of the
bridge. The lawyer's wife, Helga,
A Result of Summit Meeting drove.
His release was the high point of an' Earlier in the morning, Mr. Vogel
elaborately synchronized East-West had confirmed the identities of the five
prisoner exchange that appeared to be; people being handed over by the West
er they had arrived at Tempelhof
one of the most concrete, and dr rt from Frankfurt. Two of tmatic, results of the meeting . i thrpo e Czechoslovak-born Karl of them
he r
November between President Reaga d his wife, Hana - renown- ci'1Tieir
and Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Sovi erican citizenship only Monday at
leader. The exchange had been s United States Consulate in Frank-
cretly negotiated in the last months be- furt, officials said.
tween officials in Washington, Bonn The Others in Exchange
ana East Berlin.
Vl...Shcharaasky was released along
r.~n cti,t e aver. accused of being North
Atlantic Treaty Organization spies. In
exchange, five people from Warsaw
Pact countries were handed back on
the Glienicke Bridge, which separates
the outskirts of West Berlin from the
East German town of Potsdam,
Although American officials and
others confirmed last week that the ex-
change was set to take place today, Mr.
Shcharansky learned only Monday that
he would be freed from a labor camp.
Was Accused of Being a Spy
Mr. Shcharansky was sentenced in
1978 to 13 years in prison and labor
camps for treason, espionage and anti-
Soviet agitation. The Soviet authorities
said he had been spying for the United
States; he and the United States have
denied it.
Mr. Shcharansky was greeted on the
West Berlin side of the bridge at 11:01
A.M. by the United States Ambassador
to West Germany, Richard R. Burt .
According to an American diplomat 11
who overheard him, Mr. Burt wel- !
comed an ebullient Mr. Shcharansky'
- to the free world" on behalf of Presi-
dent Reagan and Chancellor Helmut
Kohl of West Germany.
In addition to Mr. Koecher, who was
arrested in 1984 in the Unit tates on
charges o passing C.I.A. secrets to
Czechoslovakia n i wry
erman surrendered Yev en Zem-
L a ov a member of the Soviet trade
mission in Colo a ailed in 1985 on
c arges o stea rn i -tec t se-
cr s * erz aczmare t a Polish intel-
li ence o icer w o a in iltrated a
refugee resett ement o ice in Bremen -
and Detlef Scharfenoth an East Ger-
man agent jailed on espionage charges,
facvear.
United States officials said the three
men freed with Mr. Shcharansky were
Wolf Georg Frohn who was sentenced
to life imprisonment in Ea
in 1j81 for syvme or the C.I.A.: D
trich Nistro sentenced to life in East
errrian tor spying or West German
inte igence an ams av ,sky. a
Czechoslovak-born West German citi-
zen who was arrested on returning to
Czechoslovakia.
On the Potsdam side of the bridge,
the United States Ambassador to East
Germany, Francis J. Meehan, con-
firmed the identities of Mr. Shcharan-
sky and his three companions, for-
mally asking them whether they were
of sound mind and willing to be trans-
ferred to the West. Crowded into in a
small yellow van, they assented, offi-
cials said.
The solitary appearance of Mr.
Shcharansky enabled Ambassador
Burt and Ludwig Rehlinger, a West
German official, to spirit the dissident
away in a Mercedes limousine while
the rest of the exchange continued,
with Mrs. Vogel shuttling prisoners up
and down the bridge. A van carrying
suitcases, television sets and other ap-
pliances also had to be unloaded.
`Just Tickled'
Mr. Shcharansky was described by
those who spoke with him as overjoyed
and excited and, as one American put
it, "just tickled, in a bubbly mood."
Although he had recently been excep-
tionally well fed in a labor camp, he
was said to have interpreted this treat-
ment as hinting at a relative's visit, not
his freedom. He was flown to East Ber-
lin on Monday.
After the exchange, he was taken to-
day to Tempelhof Airport, where
frozen brake linings on a United States
Air Force C-140 Jet Star exploded the
tires as it was taxiing down the run-
way. Mr. Shcharansky Mr. Burt and
Mr. Rehlinger switched to a standby
Lear Jet for their flight to the Rhein-
Main Air Base outside Frankfurt.
After landing there at 1:15 P.M., Mr.
Shcharansky was driven across the
runway for the reunion at a Frankfurt
airport lounge with his wife, Avital,
who had not seen him since emigrating
from the Soviet Union the day after
their wedding. She had arrived from Is-
rael at 11:30 A.M. on a twin-engined Is-
raeli Westwind jet bearing a doctor,
who found Mr. Shcharansky fit and
well enough to t v. warml threw his
Mr. Shc ara y Y
arms around Yitzhak Ben-Ari, the Is.
raeli Ambassador to West Germany,
when introduced to him in the lounge
In a telephone conversation, Mr. Ben-
Ad later said he had brought a blank
Israeli passport with him and "filled it
out on the spot, since I hadn't known
how tall he was and so on."
"I must say that I was full of opti-
mism about humankind seeing this lit-
tle man so full of joy, happiness, spirit
and enthusiasm - and not broken,"
Mr. Ben-Ari said. "He was very happy
to travel to Israel as a citizen and not as
a tourist."
The Israelis also gave Mr. Shcharan-
sky a new pair of pants to replace the
baggy ones - "stuck together with
pins," Mr. Ben-Ari said.
From the lounge, the Shcharanskys
were taken to the Israeli jet, as a
Libyan Arab Airlines Boeing 727 taxied
by. Security was light. The Westwind
jet took off for Israel at 2:33 P.M.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/27: CIA-RDP90-00552R000606090005-7