Soviet Scientist Says He Fears Police Frame-up

A well-known Soviet scientist has not been to work lately because he fears a police frame-up if he left his apartment.

Armen G. Khachaturyan, a recognized authority on metal alloys, normally spends his days at the Institute of Crystallography of the prestigious Academy of Sciences.

But this week he stayed at home, behind a triple-locked door, with his wife, Svetlana, and their 25-year-old son, Karen, to guard against intruders.

Khachaturyan, who has been trying for four years without success to emigrate to Israel, said that he was afraid security police would plant incriminating evidence if the apartment were left vacant.

He said that police had ordered all three members of the family to appear for questioning at the same time--a request that aroused his suspicions.

Unknown Would-Be Intruder

That same night, he said, six or more police officers appeared in a car outside his building and someone--he doesn’t know who--turned a key in one of the three locks on his front door shortly before midnight Monday.

The family remained silent, and eventually the would-be intruder went away, Khachaturyan said, but he is still too wary to leave the apartment unguarded.

He recalled the well-publicized cases in which police said they found a gun and narcotics in the apartments of two teachers of Hebrew who were later convicted and sent to labor camps. Friends of the two men--Alex Kholmiansky and Yuli Edelstein--charged that the evidence was planted by police. The police denied the charges.

Khachaturyan is apprehensive because he had informed his superior at the Academy of Sciences that he and his family would conduct a hunger strike during the 12th International Youth Festival to protest the denial of exit visas for them.

‘A Very Big Risk’

“We are taking a very big risk, but we have almost no chance to leave otherwise,” Khachaturyan said.

“We are under siege in our own apartment,” he added.

He was a visiting professor at e UC Berkeley in 1977 and 1979, but he was later refused permission to travel to scientific meetings abroad after he applied to emigrate, he said.

His son was expelled from Moscow University, where he was a fourth-year physics student, because of the family’s desire to leave the country, Khachaturyan added.

Government officials said their request for permission to join a relative in Israel was turned down because they lacked sufficient motive to emigrate.

Khachaturyan said, however, that “our wish to leave the Soviet Union is unshakable.”