Yosyf Terelia released (12/27/81)

Yosyf Terelia released

ORANGE, Calif. - Yosyf Terelia, a member of the banned Ukrainian Catholic Church in the USSR, has recently been released from a general psychiatric hospital near his home in the Transcarpathian region, reported Keston News.

The 38-year-old Ukrainian Catholic activist first got into trouble at school for asserting Ukrainian nationalism. In 1962, he was sentenced to four years in a labor camp on a criminal charge, and later received a supplementary eight-year term for "slandering" the government.

In 1972, he was diagnosed mentally ill for allegedly writing and disseminating Ukrainian poetry and sent to the Sychovka Special Psychiatric Hospital near Smolensk.

Shortly after his release on April 7, 1976, he petitioned Bishop Agafangel, the Russian Orthodox bishop of Vinnytsia, in an attempt to gain permission to train for the priesthood. The bishop consented to the request, but in November, Mr. Terelia was detained in a Vinnytsia mental hospital for two weeks.

After he was released with a warning, Mr. Terelia wrote a protest letter to the head of the KGB. In April 1977 he was detained in a mental hospital.

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