Prosecutors Step Up Coup Probe : Treason: Gorbachev’s friend Lukyanov is formally charged. His lawyer says his right to present a defense is being denied.

Prosecutors offered new details about their sweeping investigation into the failed coup against Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev on Friday, even as Anatoly I. Lukyanov, former chairman of the Soviet legislature and one of Gorbachev’s closest friends, was formally charged with treason.

Russian Federation Chief Prosecutor Valentin Stepankov said that 14 disgraced officials, who are accused in the coup plot and whose cases may not go to trial for months, are sharing ordinary cells with up to four other men--all of them suspected criminals. He said the officials all have defense lawyers and that “all the various human rights guaranteed under our legislation . . . are being observed.”

But Genrikh Padva, Lukyanov’s lawyer, said in an interview Thursday that Russian prosecutors are, in effect, “denying us the right to present a defense.”

Padva, who has practiced Soviet law for more than 30 years, complained that because prosecutors insist on using federal legal practices, instead of acting under the more liberal Russian Federation code, he and Lukyanov’s other lawyer have not yet been allowed access to material gathered in the investigation.

At this point, he said, all he can do is sit with Lukyanov and “discuss things,” working out a line of defense.

The junta members are up against a joint Soviet-Russian probe, run by 75 investigators and backed up by the Russian KGB and police. With treason punishable by death here, the stakes in the legal battle may be their lives.

Massive by Soviet standards, the investigation itself will take at least two or three more months, perhaps longer, Stepankov said, adding: “What’s important is not deadlines but the fullness and effectiveness of the investigation.”

Asked at a Moscow news conference about the particulars of the expected trials--whether they would be open or closed and whether death sentences might be sought--Stepankov said all such questions would be decided by the court.

Officials said they are sifting through a flood of information about the State Emergency Committee, as members of the rightist junta called themselves. They have also amassed a huge number of reports on how other officials behaved during the three-day coup attempt.

Yevgeny Lisov, who heads the investigative team, said his detectives are trying to stay out of politics--politically the demise of the Communist Party. “We’re not talking about the investigation of concrete structures or agencies. We’re investigating criminal cases against concrete people who worked in one structure or another,” he said.

The minimum sentence for treason under Article 64 of the Russian penal code is 10 years in prison. Those charged include the surviving members of the junta, who in their former posts were vice president, prime minister, KGB chief, defense minister, and prominent officials in agriculture, business and the defense industry.

The eighth member of the committee, Interior Minister Boris K. Pugo, committed suicide before he could be arrested. Others charged include Soviet Communist Party Secretary Oleg Shenin, Gorbachev’s former chief of staff Valery Boldin and three additional top KGB officers.

Padva said Lukyanov wears normal clothes and is housed in a two-person cell, but, “like all cells, it could be nicer. His conditions are normal,” he said. “He’s writing verses.”

Lukyanov has vehemently denied any involvement in the coup against Gorbachev, his old law school roommate. But his actions look suspect: At the height of the putsch, when the Supreme Soviet was desperately needed to pronounce the coup unconstitutional, Lukyanov refrained from calling lawmakers into session. He also has been accused of being the coup’s “chief ideologist.”

Besides the 14 arrested officials, seven other people are under investigation in the Russian republic, Stepankov said, bringing the total to 21. Other republics are running their own investigations, and Lithuanian prosecutors were reported on their way to Moscow on Friday to interrogate arrested KGB, defense and Communist Party officials. The theory is that these individuals were behind January’s bloody military assault on civilians in Vilnius.

But Stepankov rejected allegations that an investigation of the type conducted during the time of dictator Josef Stalin is under way. “There is no organized terror or massive investigation” or purge being conducted, he said.

Lisov, too, warned that “some people are trying to use this investigation to take revenge on people they don’t like. We’d like to warn them to get rid of any desire for revenge.”

Gorbachev may be asked to speak to investigators and even to testify, Stepankov said, “like any citizen.” But he denied that there is any evidence to show that the Soviet leader himself had been behind the coup or had helped to plan it.

But officials said there is mounting evidence that the KGB under former chief Vladimir A. Kryuchkov had conspired against Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin, in violation of the law and its own regulations. Yeltsin said last week that the KGB had bugged his telephones since 1989, and Boldin, a top KGB official and Gorbachev aide, was found to have a set of large, black notebooks full of Yeltsin’s conversations.