In April this year a long-distance call from Moscow was put through to a London barrister. In the 15 seconds before she was cut off by the KGB, a Russian woman begged the lawyer to undertake the defence of her husband. His name was Professor Yuri Orlov , held incommunicado in Lefortovo Prison on unspecified charges.
John MacDonald , QC, accepted the unique brief, and this film documentary is the story of how he, a British lawyer, unfamiliar with Russian and the Russian legal system, set out nevertheless to defend a client he had never seen, and to whom the authorities would allow no access.
Yuri Orlov is a Russian dissident and champion of human rights. The story of his defence is told at a time when the USSR and other signatories to the Helsinki Declaration are assembled in Belgrade, a time when the issue of human rights could be the key to East-West detente.