FRANCIS POWERS, 32, flew home to the United States yesterday a free man after spending nearly 18 months of a 10-year sentence in a Soviet prison, accused of spying on Russia from the air.

It was his first flight since his U2 high-level reconnaissance jet was brought down in Russia on May 1, 1960. At the same time, the Russian spy Colonel Rudolf Abel, who was serving a 30-year sentence in America, was released.

Russia’s decision to free Powers was influenced by “a desire to improve relations” with the United States, it was announced in Moscow. A statement broadcast by Moscow Radio said the presidium of the Supreme Soviet had examined a petition by Powers’s relatives and had taken into account the pilot’s own admission that he had committed a “grave crime”.

Powers was handed over to American authorities at the Glienicke bridge, Berlin, yesterday morning in exchange for Abel. Frederic Pryor, an American student held by the East Germans since last August, has also been released.

Powers was released to US officials by Soviet secret police in exchange for Russia’s “master spy”, Colonel Rudolf Ivanovich Abel, sentenced in 1957 in America to 30 years’ imprisonment.

Twenty American and Soviet secret service officials in civilian clothes faced each other across the Glienicke bridge, which marks the border between East Berlin and West Berlin.

Powers, wearing a dark overcoat and a Russian-style fur cap, walked briskly into West Berlin across the white line painted on the bridge. A few seconds later, Abel left the group of American secret service agents who had brought him to West Berlin by air from a prison in Atlanta, Georgia, on Wednesday.

Abel went forward to shake hands with Soviet officials standing on the East Berlin side of the line. He spent last night in a US army prison cell in West Berlin.

Eyewitnesses say the ceremony, which lasted only a few minutes, was carried through without a hitch, though the atmosphere between the US and Soviet secret service agents was described as “frosty”. No courtesies were exchanged.

The signal for the exchange was given by the Americans after they had made a telephone check with the US headquarters in West Berlin.

A few hours later, Powers, who is said to be in good health, left Berlin for America in a special army aircraft, which landed only once on the way, to refuel at Wiesbaden airbase in West Germany.

I understand Powers was told only on Wednesday by the Russians that he was to be freed. He left his prison at Vladimir, 100 miles east of Moscow, two days ago for Berlin under an escort after serving 18 months of the 10-year sentence of detention passed on him by a Soviet military tribunal in August 1960, on charges of espionage.

His U2 photo reconnaissance plane was brought down, the Russians claimed, by a direct hit with a rocket missile near Sverdlovsk while on a flight from Peshawar in Pakistan to Bodo in Norway.

In Moscow the Soviet news agency announced Captain Powers’s release without mentioning that he had been exchanged for Colonel Abel.

The Russian statement merely said Powers had been freed to improve American-Soviet relations and in response to pleas by Powers’s relatives.

The release came as a surprise to Powers, as well as to his family. His wife Barbara received a letter from him in America last week saying he had been told by Soviet officials recently not to expect a remission on his sentence.

Abel’s wife and family, who are living in Leipzig, apparently expected his release. Some months ago they sent a cheque for $10,000 to him in prison. He asked that this be distributed among three American universities. Abel had operated Russia’s entire espionage network in the United States for nine years before he was discovered.

After his return to the US, Powers worked for Lockheed as a test pilot. He later became a helicopter pilot for a Los Angeles television station and died in August 1977 when his chopper ran out of fuel while he was covering a brush fire. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

The reporter Antony Terry, who died in 1992, was himself a former intelligence officer.

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