WORLD : Czechs Free Havel on Probation
Playwright Vaclav Havel, Czechoslovakia’s best-known opposition activist, was freed on probation today after serving half of an eight-month jail sentence on protest-related charges.
Havel was arrested in January during a week of anti-government protests.
His imprisonment, widely condemned in the West as well as by intellectuals in Poland, Hungary and the Soviet Union, marked the start of a new crackdown on dissent by Czechoslovak authorities. Czechoslovakia’s Communist leaders have resisted the political reforms that are sweeping through much of the rest of the Soviet Bloc.
Havel, a co-founder of the Charter 77 human rights movement, may have been released early to head off criticism at an international human rights conference opening in Paris on May 30, opposition activists said.
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