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- <text id=90TT1068>
- <title>
- Apr. 30, 1990: World Notes:Soviet Union
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
- Apr. 30, 1990 Vietnam 15 Years Later
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- WORLD, Page 67
- World Notes
- SOVIET UNION
- Biting Back At Watchdogs
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> "Down with Gorbachev!" some 10,000 protesters shouted within
- earshot of the Kremlin. "Down with the KGB!" The demonstrators
- had gathered to support criminal investigators Telman Gdlyan
- and Nikolai Ivanov. The two became popular heroes last year
- after publicly accusing Politburo conservative Yegor Ligachev
- of corruption; both were elected to parliament last spring. But
- now they are accused of illegally detaining witnesses and
- forcing confessions in a six-year probe of a multimillion-ruble
- scandal involving racketeering and influence peddling in
- Uzbekistan, which nailed the son-in-law of the late Communist
- Party boss Leonid Brezhnev, among others.
- </p>
- <p> Last week a Supreme Soviet session agreed that Gdlyan and
- Ivanov had broken the law by arresting family members of
- suspected bribe takers. But the legislators stopped short of
- lifting their parliamentary immunity so that prosecutors could
- press charges against them. Noted former dissident Roy
- Medvedev, who headed a Supreme Soviet inquiry into the affair:
- "One thing is clear--they have no evidence that Ligachev took
- bribes." The crowd outside the Kremlin, however, continued to
- call for Ligachev's resignation.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-