Prague, June 6 (CTK) – The Slovak-born Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis (ANO) plans to sue Slovakia at the European Human Rights Court over the case of his alleged cooperation with the former Czechoslovak communist secret police StB, he told reporters today.
“If media say I lost a court dispute over [my clearance as a former] StB [agent], it is a lie, since I won the dispute and I will win again. By June 15, I will file a lawsuit against Slovakia with the European Court of Human Rights,” Babis said after today’s ceremony of his second appointment as Czech PM following his first cabinet’s failure to win the confidence of parliament.
Babis was reacting to Tuesday’s protests of thousands of Czechs who do not want him to be prime minister, also due to his alleged cooperation with the StB.
Babis said people have been influenced by mendacious information in the media.
Court proceedings over Babis’s alleged cooperation with the StB started in January 2012, when he filed a lawsuit against the Slovak Memory of the Nation Institute (UPN) over its declaration, based on archive files, that he had cooperated with the StB under the communist regime.
Initially, Slovak courts decided that Babis’s name figures in the files as an StB agent unrightfully. However, the verdicts supporting Babis were cancelled by the Slovak Constitutional Court (US) last year.
The US argued that the UPN, which is in charge of the StB files in Slovakia, is not the appropriate party to be sued in this case. Furthermore, the US stated that the courts wrongly based their verdicts on the testimony of former StB officers who had not been relieved of their duty of confidentiality. The US also challenged the reliability of these witnesses testifying in favour of Babis.
In new proceedings, the regional court in Bratislava, bound by the US statement, dismissed Babis’s lawsuit earlier this year.
Babis has filed a petition for an appellate review with the Slovak Supreme Court (NS).