Dershowitz Hopes to Take Soviet Case

Alan M. Dershowitz, professor of Law, said this week he will go to the Soviet Union sometime this year to defend several imprisoned political dissidents awaiting trial, if the Soviet government grants him permission.

Dershowitz, who defended a group of 11 Soviet human rights activists in the 1974 "Leningrad trials" after they tried to leave the Soviet Union by hijacking a plane, said he will ask the Soviet government for permission to attend the trial of a group of scientists who have been in prision since last November without being charged.

Saying he will announce his plans when the Soviets formally charge the group, which includes physicist and dissident leader Victor Brailovsky. Dershowitz said he will help the prisoners in whatever way the government will permit him. But he added that he is "not optimistic" he will be allowed to attend the trial.

In 1979 the Soviet government turned down Dershowitz's request to assist Anatoly Scharansky, a member of the "Helsinki watch group." Scharansky is now serving a 13-year prison sentence.

George E. Mamedov, press officer at the Soviet embassy in Washington, said yesterday that his government would probably not allow Dershowitz to attend the trial. Although Mamedov added that Brailovsky "engaged in anti-Soviet propoganda, spread gossip and slandered the Soviet system,"--all crimes under "a special section of the Soviet penal code"--Dershowitz said Brailovsky faces trial "because he is a Jewish human rights activist."

Improving the Atmosphere

"I hope to be able to focus public attention on the case, getting the dissidents a fair trial, or at least a lenient sentence," Dershowitz said, adding that they often have difficulty "getting a lawyer who is on their said."

Dershowitz estimated that the trial will take place this summer.