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Government Wants to Revisit Quashing of Meciar's Amnesties
Thursday 29 July 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, July 29 (TASR) - The Government Manifesto opens with a preamble which, among other things, contains a pledge to work out a constitutional law that would enable the so-called Meciar's amnesties to be quashed, TASR was told by coalition Christian Democrats (KDH) spokesman Martin Krajcovic on Thursday.
A series of amnesties issued by then-Premier and acting President Vladimir Meciar in 1998 are seen as an obstacle for launching an investigation of crimes related to the infamous case of the 1995 abduction of a Slovak citizen (President Michal Kovac's son) abroad.
Lawyer Ernest Valko said that, in fact, there is a historical precedent for quashing amnesties via a constitutional law. It happened in Argentina. "The Argentinean Supreme Court cancelled a set of amnesties issued by military junta in 1970s," he said.
According to KDH, the new Coalition's pledge to break the scandalous amnesties represents an attempt to "cope with the legacy of a totalitarian period when human rights were being ignored.
[The case, which hinged on Kovac Jr's alleged role in a fraud involving Technopol, also involved the death of a go-between with a witness to the kidnapping across the Slovak border to the police in Austria. There have been numerous attempts to lift or quash the amnesties in the intervening years. - ed. note]
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