Bratislava, Feb 8 (CTK) – Slovak courts preferred trusting dubious witnesses rather than the state institute dealing with the totalitarian past in connection with Czech Finance Minister Andrej Babis’s suspected links to the former Czechoslovak communist secret police (StB), daily Dennik N writes yesterday.
It reacts to the Slovak Supreme Court’s verdict upholding a lower-level court decision that the StB’s listing of Babis as an StB agent was unrightful.
“Babis, who might become the next Czech prime minister, is often mentioned in the StB archive documents, though the file the StB kept on him under the codename Bures was previously shredded,” Dennik N writes.
“The archive documents with this codename repeatedly refer to Babis’s knowing and voluntary cooperation with the communist secret police. However, Babis will probably be acquitted of it thanks to the testimony by two former StB officers, or servants of the criminal organisation,” Dennik N writes.
The testimonies of the officers were crucial in the court dispute in which Babis successfully sued the Slovak National Memory Institute (UPN), which keeps and manages the StB archives.
By the court decisions based on untrustworthy testimonies, the Slovak state has humiliated the UPN and the real victims of the StB, the daily adds.
Similarly, daily Sme writes that Slovak courts did not seek the truth in the case of Babis and similar previous cases, but gave the truth to the complainants, though the credibility of witnesses was dubious in view of their criminal past and supposed suggestibility.
“The acceptance of testimonies that run counter to the logic of the respective stories and smack of the suggestibility and incredibility of witnesses, says more about the courts than about the past of Babis and his colleagues,” Sme writes.
If Babis expected the court verdict to raise his moral status and reputation, he will probably be disappointed, it adds.
Babis, a billionaire, leads the ANO movement that entered the Czech Chamber of Deputies in 2013 and joined the centre-left government established in early 2014. ANO is the most popular party in the Czech Republic and a hot favourite in the October general election.
