Prague - Closing some chapters in history proves somewhat impossible and it seems from time to time the communist past comes to haunt some, even including high-ranking politicians.
Members of Czech Parliament Walter Bartoš, Juraj Raninec, Tomáš Hasil and Pavel Ploc were accused of having cooperated with the Communist Military Counter-intelligence before the Velvet Revolution.
Public service broadcaster Czech Television informed about this, referring to the archives of the secret services that was partially disclosed last week. About 140,000 records from the period of 1954-1989 appeared online.
Bartoš, Raninec and Hasil, all members of the Civic Democratic Party (ODS), reject these allegations, labelling them as untrue.
Every step I took
So does former ski jumper and current Social Democratic (ČSSD) MP Pavel Ploc who said that due to his trips abroad, he was under constant surveillance by the Communist agents.
"They [members of the communist counter-intelligence] monitored every step I made," Ploc said in an interview for Radio Česko. His colleagues from Dukla Liberec sport club had the same experience. Ploc claimed that he had never cooperated with the counter-intelligence, though.
Although the four names are mentioned in the counter-intelligence documents, it is hard to determine what was the scope of their cooperation and if they cooperated intentionally.
"We cannot really define what the scope of their engagement was, or what exactly they did," said Martin Pulec, deputy director of the Archive of Security Forces.
Legal action
The archive representatives also noted the Constitutional Court´s ruling on the category of confidant of the secret service, which sets out that a 'confidant', 'informer candidate' or 'agent candidate' are not included in a category of intentional cooperation with secret police.
"The fact that somebody was registered as a confidant or a candidate with the secret service doesn't mean he was a snitch," said the archive's spokesman Jiří Reichel to Czech Television.
The four MPs do not rule out the possibility of taking legal action in order to have their names cleared from the allegation.
It has recently transpired that Social Democratic lawmaker Evžen Snítilý is on the list of the Communist counter-intelligence collaborators, as well.
