Soviet dissident mathematician Leonid Plyushch, still visibly week from two and a half years in a soviet mental hospital, drew a harrowing picture of life for political detainees in the Soviet Union, at a news conference in Paris on Tuesday (3 February).

The 37-year-old Ukranian described scenes in mental hospitals where "political patients", bullied by common criminals serving as male nurses, vied with lunatics for cigarette stubs lying among used toilet paper.

At the French news conference - his first public appearance since he reached the West a month ago - Plyushch accused Soviet doctors of aiding police in their interrogations, brutalising prisoners and ordering injections of sulphur which induced insufferable pain.

Plyushch, speaking at first with difficulty, made clear that he was still a committed Communist. He said it was the Soviet regime which was "sick.. and a shameful taint on the bright ideals of socialism".

Plyushch vowed to keep up the fight for political and other freedoms within the Soviet Union. He called on Western Communists and civil liberations "to fight for man's right in the U.S.S.R. It is your international duty".

Dr. Plyushch was arrested on anti Soviet charges in his home city of Kiev in 1972. He was committed to a psychiatric hospital the following year, after doctors said the he was suffering from Schizophrenia.