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Vetting planned for ČR police

Interpol chief's past in secret police sparks call for more screening

By Kimberly Ashton
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
February 7th, 2007 issue

About 1,000 people who work in high-level positions in police departments nationwide will be rescreened for possible ties to the former communist regime following the revelation that Pavol Mihál, the Czech Interpol chief, may have collaborated with the communist secret police, or StB.

On Feb. 5, Interior Minister Ivan Langer ordered the re-examination of lustration certificates — the pledges that key state officials are required to sign indicating no history of collaboration — for all directors and deputy directors in regional, district and city police departments nationwide.
The police will also recheck everyone working at the Police Presidium, according to Radek Holý, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry.
A total of 46,000 people work in police departments nationwide.
“If the rescreening is positive, the person loses his position. All these posts … require a negative screening,” Holý said.
The Czech Republic has had a lustration law on the books since 1991, and, by many accounts, has set the pace for the region in terms of dealing with the past. Former regime hands are banned from high-level positions in the government, civil service, security and the judiciary, among other institutions.
Everyone to be rescreened has already gone through the vetting process and obtained a clean lustration certificate. But the Mihál scandal shows there may be holes in the system, officials say.
StB files show that Mihál is listed as an agent and was active in the organization throughout the 1980s — a charge he denies.
Mihál has a negative lustration certificate, but it was issued under the name Pavel Mihál — Pavel is the Czech spelling of Pavol.
Mihál is still working at Interpol, where, ironically, he has been credited with exposing many former spies himself.
The scandal is the latest high-profile outing of a communist-era agent to surface in the region in recent weeks.
Last month, Polish Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus resigned moments before his inauguration in light of the discovery that he cooperated with the secret police during communism.
Also last month, Czech theologian Jindřich Holeček, a lecturer at the Faculty of Theology in Olomouc, was stripped of a prestigious scholarship medal after his secret-police associations were revealed.
 

Hela Balínova contributed to this report.

Kimberly Ashton can be reached at kashton@praguepost.com


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