Mikhail Kukobaka re-arrested (12/29/85)

Mikhail Kukobaka re-arrested

MUNICH - Mikhail Kukobaka, who was first sentenced in 1976 for writing articles for the samizdat, was re-arrested in 1984 for carrying out "anti-Soviet propaganda" within the camp he has been imprisoned.

News of the arrest was only recently released by USSR News Brief based in Munich, because the whereabouts of Mr. Kukobaka where unknown for nearly a year.

Mr. Kukobaka was to have been released in October 1984, but before his expected release, he was charged with "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda" (Article 70) to the Russian SFSR Criminal Code. The length of his sentence is unknown, although according to the Brief, it is probable he was given the maximum sentence of seven years' strict-regimen camp and five years' exile.

A worker from the Byelorussian SSR, Mr. Kukobaka, 49, was first arrested in 1970 for political reasons, was diagnosed to be mentally incompetent and kept in a special psychiatric hospital until 1976. In 1976, he was twice taken to a regular psychiatric hospital. In 1978, he was again arrested and sentenced to three years' in a camp for "dissemination of deliberately false fabrications that slander the state" (Article 190-1). Not long before his expected release, he was again arrested for "anti-Soviet propaganda in 1981 to three years' in a strict-regime camp.

Mr. Kukobaka suffers from chronic double otitis, arthritis and an edema in the legs.