President. last Sunday. we marked the fourth anniversary of the arrest and imprisonment of Anatoly Shcharansky. the Soviet Jewish activisit whose conviction triggered a lasting political and public outcry. In 1973. Anatoly Shcharansky first submitted his application for a visa to Israel. At that time. he was refused on the grounds that he possessed classified information. He was repeatedly denied permission to emigrate on the same grounds regardless of the known fact that the institute in which he was working as a computer technologist did not deal with classified information. He became active in the Helsinki Watch Committee in Moscow in 1976 and was soon the victim of harassment by the Soviet secret police. the KGB. In March 1977. he was arrested on charges of treason and placed in solitary confinement in Moscows Lefortovo Prison.
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