Iron Curtain Holds Family : Marksman in Toughest Test of Nerve

Propped on a window sill in Dan Iuga’s two-room apartment are cards and letters sent by the family he has not seen since he defected from Romania in 1981.

An angry and frustrated Iuga said Wednesday that Romanian officials have refused to grant permission for his wife and two daughters to leave the country he now calls “a huge prison.”

Iuga, who coached Ruby Fox of the United States to a silver medal in the 1984 Olympic shooting competition, sleeps in a folding bed that leaves little space for the rest of the second-hand furniture and appliances in the living room.

“I am accustomed to a much higher living standard,” said Iuga, 39. “But I’m saving everything I earn for the day my family and I are reunited.”

Attempts Ignored

When that day will come, if ever, no one is sure. Attempts by elected officials, U.S. Olympic team members and National Rifle Assn. leaders to get his wife, Nina, 36, and daughters, Laura, 9, and Ileana, 8, out of Romania have fallen on deaf ears.

Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.), in a letter mailed to one of Iuga’s supporters last Oct. 25, wrote: “I have not, as yet, heard from the Romanian ambassador to the United States, but that is not unusual.”

Iuga’s wife, who has lived with relatives in Bucharest since losing her job as head of a government-owned import-export business shortly after her husband defected, telephoned Sunday to say she was planning a hunger strike for an indefinite period starting March 6. Iuga said he has no choice but to join her in the hunger strike.

“In her mind, if she dies,” Iuga said, staring at the cards on the wall, “the kids would be allowed to leave the country.”

But, he asked, “what will happen to the kids seeing their mother starving? Two kids, just 8 and 9 years old.”

Iuga, who won a silver medal for pistol shooting at the 1972 Olympic Games, was national coach of the Romanian Olympic shooting team when he defected in West Germany in 1981. At the time, he was very unhappy with Romanian officials who insisted that he include “political lessons” about communist ideology in his shooting program.

Moreover, “sometimes we competed with weak teams because political leaders wouldn’t let the best people out of the country out of fear they would defect.”

In West Germany, he applied for political asylum, which was granted by the Bonn government in early 1982. A few months later, word of Iuga’s defection reached Terry Anderson, then national coach of the U.S. Olympic pistol program.

Guaranteed Olympic Job

Anderson sent Iuga an airline ticket to the United States. He also guaranteed Iuga a job with the U.S. Olympic team. Iuga applied for and was granted permanent residency status by U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service officials in West Palm Beach, Fla., in 1983.

Last Feb. 24, Iuga joined the U.S. Olympic program as a head coach of pistol shooting training at Prado Regional Park shooting range in the Chino Valley, where he has worked ever since.

State Department officials say there is hope to reunite his family. “The fact is, Dan Iuga left Romania illegally,” said one U.S. government official close to the case who did not want to be named. “And the Romanians’ view of these kind of things is that it (legal emigration of relatives of defectors) must not be made too easy.”

This official added, “In the majority of cases they do grant approval, but with lengthy delays.”

The Romanian gymnastic trainer Bela Karoly, for example, who coached Nadia Comaneci to six medals at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, defected to the United States with his wife, Marta, in April, 1981. Their 7-year-old daughter, Andrea, was left behind. Romanian officials allowed the girl to join her parents in the United States six months later.

Anderson, a wealthy Dallas real estate developer who directs training for the U.S. Olympic shooting team, believes that the Romanians have stalled intentionally in Iuga’s case.

“I think they are concerned that Dan is doing such a good job here,” said Anderson. “They figure the more pressure they bring to bear, the worse he’ll do.”

Last May, Anderson traveled to Romania to console Iuga’s wife.

“She was crying and said, ‘Tell my husband I’ll never see him again, nor will his children,’ ” Anderson recalled. “I told Nina that’s not how it works. That we have too many influential people behind us.”

Meanwhile, Iuga spends sleepless nights worrying that Romanian government officials may grow angry over his wife’s continuing efforts to win permission to leave the country. He also worries that she may give up.

“Nina is afraid she may be put in a psychiatric ward. It’s the system over there,” Iuga said. “Last Sunday, she was crying. She said she can’t bear any more . . . that she had reached the end of her power of living.”