The World - News from Dec. 30, 1987
The leader of the West German state of Bavaria appealed to Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to shorten the prison term of Mathias Rust, the teen-ager who was sentenced to four years in labor camp after flying illegally through Soviet airspace and landing his light plane in Moscow’s Red Square last May. Franz Josef Strauss made the appeal in a meeting with Gorbachev at the Kremlin, a West German Embassy spokesman said. Strauss, whose Bavarian Christian Social Union is the most conservative partner in Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s coalition government, flew his own light plane to Moscow on Monday. Rust, whose appeal for pardon was rejected two weeks ago, is in Moscow’s Lefortovo Prison awaiting transfer to a labor camp.
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