1. EXTERIOR: NIGHT: SCU Arch above doorway of Sorbonne building PULL BACK TO GV showing armed police 0.11
2. INTERIOR GVs Members preparing their documents for session (2 shots) 0.24
3. CU Michel Verron speaking (FRENCH SOT) PULL BACK TO GV 1.09
4. GV Photographs in exhibition, showing people, armaments, pictures of corpses, and poster r of flying dove (5 shots) 1.46
InitialsJS/BB


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Background: PARIS, FRANCE

The "Permanent Tribunal of the Peoples" has begun a special four-day session on the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. The session was to last from December 16-20. The body, a successor to the Bernard Russell Tribunal which in the 1960s lashed the United States for its involvement in Vietnam, held an earlier session on Afghanistan in Stockholm in May, 1981. Its honourary president is Dr Vladimir Dedijer, the Yugoslav author and former member of the central committee of the Yugoslav Communist League. The organisers said they had asked Afghan local leaders to testify at the session about alleged atrocities by the Soviet occupying forces. The basic theme of this session was to pursue the question: "Has the Soviet Union violated human rights in Afghanistan, especially against the civilian population?". Tribunal members will be looking into one report, from United States citizen, Michael Barry, that Soviet troops had burned alive 105 Afghan villagers, including 11 children, at Padkhwab-e-Shana. The Afghan regime of Barbar Karmal has already dismissed this report as "propaganda". On the opening day, a former UNESCO member in Kabul. Mr. Michael Verron, delivered a report on the Soviet occupation since the tribunal's Stockholm session in 1981.

Source: REUTERS - FREDERIC FABRE