Soviet Sailor Reportedly Wanted to Defect : Border Patrol Knew It but Returned Him to Ship, Interpreter Says

The interpreter who first interviewed Soviet seaman Miroslav Medvid said Thursday that the Border Patrol returned him to the Russian ship after she told agents the man had indicated he wanted to defect to the United States.

The interpreter, Irene Padoch, told the Associated Press: “When I asked him why he jumped ship, he said, ‘Because I want to live in an honest country.’ ”

Padoch, a New York interpreter who speaks Ukrainian and provides interpretations to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, said that during the nearly hour-long telephone interview with Medvid, she concluded that he did not understand the use of the word “asylum” and thought that meant he might be institutionalized.

The telephone interview began late last Thursday night and continued well past midnight, she said.

‘Very Much Afraid’

Padoch said she told Border Patrol agents on the scene that Medvid had told her he was “very much afraid of what they (the Soviet authorities) will do to him” if he is returned.

“I related that to the Border Patrol” before Medvid was taken back to the Soviet ship, she said.

Duke Austin, a spokesman for the immigration service, said Padoch’s statements conflict with sworn statements made by Border Patrol officials and that the INS was looking into the matter in an attempt to resolve the conflict.

“The Border Patrol clearly understood her to say (after talking to Medvid) that he did not want asylum, but that he did not want to go back to the ship,” Austin said. “Now that moves him from the category of a defector to someone who’s jumped ship.”

Asked how Medvid responded when she asked if he was seeking political asylum in the United States, Padoch said “he couldn’t understand.” She said she concluded he thought asylum “meant something for the mentally ill.”

Shultz’s Comment

Asked about the Medvid case at a news conference, Secretary of State George P. Shultz said Thursday that it was “unfortunate that he was returned to the ship in the first place before he was properly interrogated.”

Once he was taken from the ship and interviewed by U.S. officials in a “non-threatening environment,” Shultz said, Medvid’s response “was very clear that he wanted to go home.”

Shultz added that under those circumstances, “to hold him against his expressed will would have been a great mistake.”

Medvid was interviewed by government officials after he twice jumped from a freighter into the Mississippi River last week and was initially returned to the boat by U.S. Border Patrol agents who thought he was a stowaway.

Austin said Border Patrol agents at the scene last Thursday night “have given sworn statements” which conflict with Padoch’s account of what transpired.

“The impression of the Border Patrol was that he (Medvid) did not want asylum. She (Padoch) was not transcribing the telephone interview (for the Border Patrol). She was just answering their questions.”