Soviets Expel 4 Americans After Concert : Group Had Played in Impromptu Session With Rights Activists

MOSCOW —  Four Americans have been expelled from the Soviet Union after a meeting and impromptu concert with a group of Soviet Georgian human rights activists, the U.S. Embassy said today.

A spokesman said the four, whom he would not identify, left Moscow on Wednesday. They were not given any reason for their expulsion, and U.S. officials are waiting for information from the Soviet Foreign Ministry.

The U.S. spokesman said the expulsion appeared to be linked to their meeting with the Georgian dissidents, but he gave no further details. He said U.S. Embassy staff did not see the four before they were expelled.

But Eduard Gudava, 30, a member of the group set up in the southern Soviet Republic of Georgia to monitor human rights violations as spelled out in the Helsinki Charter, told Reuters by telephone that the four came from Boston.

He identified one of them as “Ned” Hankus Netsky and the others simply as Rosalie, Jeff and Meryl. He said they were in the Soviet Union as tourists and had played with a local band in a private apartment in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi on May 26.

The band, called Phantom, was made up of a number of “refuseniks”--people who have been refused visas to leave the Soviet Union--and Christians, Gudava said.

Gudava said the Americans left Tbilisi and flew on to Yerevan in neighboring Armenia on the next stage of their trip, where they were picked up by KGB police and put on a plane to Moscow.

Gudava also said his brother Tengiz, 31, another activist, was charged Wednesday with anti-Soviet agitation and slander after materials and documents were confiscated from their apartment earlier this month.

He and his mother, Raisa Ouvarova, 55, were also charged with slandering the state, Gudava said.