Soviet Editor Hints of Pardon for Flier
Kremlin officials will decide in a few weeks whether to pardon pilot Mathias Rust from his four-year sentence in a labor camp, a Soviet editor was quoted Monday as saying.
Valentin M. Falin, director of the official Soviet news agency Novosti, said in an interview with the West German pictoral magazine Quick that the requested pardon by Rust’s parents will be “politely and benevolently examined” by Soviet officials “within the next month.”
Rust, 19, was convicted by a Moscow court for his unauthorized May 28 flight to Moscow.
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