News In Brief
| Moscow
Soviet journalist, denounncing British asylum, back in USSR
Oleg Bitov, a Soviet journalist who was granted British asylum a year ago, reappeared in Moscow Tuesday and said he had been captured and tortured by British intelligence services who offered him money to work against the Soviet Union. In London, the Home Office said his account was absurd.
Mr. Bitov reportedly defected Sept. 9, 1983, in Italy while covering the Venice Film Festival and later went to Britain, leaving his wife and daughter in the USSR. A British Foreign Office spokesman said earlier this week that Bitov was ''increasingly distressed about the inability of his family to join him.''
