Turning the pages back... November 10, 1985 (11/05/00)

Turning the pages back...

November 10, 1985

In 1985, more than two weeks after a Ukrainian sailor named Myroslav Medvid first jumped ship near the port of New Orleans, the case was still making headlines. The Ukrainian Weekly on November 10 reported that, as the Marshal Koniev awaited its cargo of grain at Reserve, La., north of New Orleans on the Mississippi River and more details emerged about U.S. authorities' handling of the Ukrainian sailor who jumped from the Soviet freighter on October 24, Ukrainian Americans continued to protest.

The story, reported by a quartet of correspondents based in Jersey City, N.J. (where our home office was based), New York and Chicago, provided the following information.

* * *

The Ukrainian American Bar Association went to the Supreme Court to seek an order barring the Soviet ship from leaving U.S. waters. Attorney Andrew Fylypovych, representing the UABA and its co-plaintiffs, including the Ukrainian Human Rights Committee and the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, filed a petition for a stay, or temporary injunction. on Thursday, November 7, before Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, the Supreme Court justice whose jurisdiction is the District of Columbia.

The UABA et al said in their petition that it is doubtful that Mr. Medvid's decision to return to the USSR was voluntary and, therefore, his departure should be delayed until UABA lawyers can interview him about his intentions.

The petition was initially filed in a Philadelphia district court, but the court declined to hear the case. It was then refilled in the District Court for the District of Columbia on November 1 and rejected the same day. Mr. Fylypovych then took his case to the Court of Appeals on November 2, and two days later the court ruled against granting the stay.

Mr. Fylypovych told The Weekly that, although both courts turned down the petition, it was established that the UABA not only had the right to sue on behalf of the Ukrainian sailor, but that it, as an association of lawyers, had the right to sue on the grounds that the UABA was denied access to Mr. Medvid for the purpose of obtaining information.

He explained that what was happening in the lower courts was that the judges were saying, "this is a foreign-policy decision, we can't do anything about it," but "what we're saying is, all you have to do is order a stay to have the U.S. government stop the ship; you don't have to find the remedy, that is up to the government, up to [President Ronald] Reagan."

Meanwhile, Ukrainians throughout the country feared for a fellow Ukrainian, realizing that under Soviet criminal codes one of the definitions of treason is escape across the border or refusal to return from beyond the border back to the USSR. Thus, they had every reason to expect that Mr. Medvid would be found guilty of treason once returned to the USSR.

Source: "Furor continues over Medvid incident; Ukrainian Americans raise voices" by Roma Hadzewycz with Mykhailo Bociurkiw and Marta Kolomayets in New York and Marianna Liss in Chicago, The Ukrainian Weekly, November 10, 1985, Vol. LIII, No. 45.

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