Paper Says It Has Videotapes of Sakharov
Nobel Peace Prize winner and dissident Andrei Sakharov is alive but suffering from heart ailments and Parkinson’s disease, West Germany’s Bild newspaper said today.
In a report released in advance of its Friday editions, the newspaper said it had obtained two videotapes made at a hospital in Gorky where Sakharov is being treated.
The paper said one showed Sakharov, accompanied by his wife, Yelena Bonner, and the doctor who is treating him for an irregular heart rhythm, narrowing of the heart arteries, arteriosclerosis and the first symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.
On the tape, the doctor described the 64-year-old physicist’s condition as “satisfactory for the moment.”
The second showed Sakharov in the same clinic in a sickroom with a 1985 calendar over the bed. The physicist is shown changing the dates successively through to the last date--June 14--and is also seen with magazines dated May 27 and June 3.
Bild implied that the tapes, both about 40 minutes long, were made with a hidden camera by the Soviets to show that Sakharov is not on a hunger strike, as family and friends abroad have said recently. Some footage showed Sakharov eating heartily and receiving mail from abroad.
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