Begun’s Pardon Signed, Official Says

A Soviet official said Wednesday that imprisoned Jewish activist Josef Begun had received a pardon, but Moscow dissident circles had no confirmation that Begun or either of two other dissidents had been set free.

Samuel L. Zivs, head of the Soviet Anti-Zionist Committee, said in Geneva that Soviet President Andrei A. Gromyko or one of his deputies signed an unconditional pardon for Begun on Tuesday, and that the activist should have been freed Wednesday.

Begun’s son, Boris, said his father still was in prison but probably would be freed.

Dissident circles in Moscow had no confirmation that psychiatrist Anatoly Koryagin or Christian activist Alexander Ogorodnikov had been released from prison, Yelena Bonner said Wednesday.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennady I. Gerasimov told reporters Tuesday that the government had ordered Koryagin and Ogorodnikov freed but did not say when they would be released. He said Begun would “most likely” be released in the ongoing review of dissidents’ cases that has resulted in about 150 being granted pardons so far.

Bonner, wife of 1975 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei D. Sakharov, said by telephone that no news of the three men had reached the capital. “We know nothing of what’s happened to them. They may be in prison, they may be free.”