Prague, July 7 (CTK) – Petr Hanzlik, a signatory of the Czechoslovak dissident manifesto Charter 77, is not entitled to any compensation for the harm he suffered in connection with the Communist StB secret service Asanace (Clearance) operation, the Prague 7 district court ruled on Friday.
The court decided that the claim is statute-barred. The verdict has not yet taken effect.
Hanzlik’s lawyer Tomas Hanzlik said after the trial that he would appeal to the Prague Municipal Court.
“The court did not deal with the facts themselves because it concluded that the complainant’s claim is statute-barred,” judge Iva Kanakova said.
Hanzlik demanded almost 12 million crowns for the property he lost due to his forced emigration and 700,000 crowns for the pension he could not receive.
He also wanted the state to pay him at least once a year the average pension in the Czech Republic.
Now he receives roughly 5000 crowns a month, about one-half of the average sum.
“The StB agent who is to blame for everything may be receiving a pension of some 25,000 crowns. Now you can see that this is a farce,” Hanzlik said.
Asance was a cover name for an StB operation that forced dissidents to emigrate.
The Prague 1 district already decided that the case was statute-barred in 2015. However, the Prague Municipal Court returned the case for reappraisal.
Tomas Hanzlik said the Interior Ministry had not sufficiently proven that the case was really statute-barred.
In a criminal case linked to Hanzlik’s, the court previously convicted StB officer Jan Puklicky. The verdict took effect on January 23, 2004. The limitation period was three years, which means that Hanzlik could file his legal action by January 2007. He did so only in November 2007, however.
As a witness in Puklicky’s trial, Hanzlik previously said the StB had offered him in 1979 or 1980 that he should leave Czechoslovakia, and threatened to place him in prison or a psychiatric clinic unless he did so.
After he was repeatedly fired from work and his son from school, he yielded to the pressure and left for Austria, from where he returned in 1990, after the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia.
