BRATISLAVA, February 3, (WEBNOVINY) – Even after fourteen years it is not possible to punish people responsible for abduction of the son of former President Michal Kovac to Austria in 1995 and for thwarted referendum on Slovakia’s NATO entry. The perpetrators remain shielded by the so-called Meciar’s amnesties when Parliament failed on Friday to approve the proposal of KDH deputies to cancel them. Only seventy-eight MPs voted for the respective constitutional bill lifting the amnesties. However it needed a constitutional majority of ninety votes to pass.
All present deputies of the outgoing governing coalition supported the draft, but no opposition deputy voted for it. Before the vote, Speaker of Parliament Pavol Hrusovsky (KDH) defended the proposal by saying that amnesties must not be used to serve injustice. “The institute of amnesty, or any norm of the legal order may not be used to serve injustice by itself. Legislation should serve justice and not to establish injustice. Justice means using the same scale for every one,” Hrusovsky stated.
Hrusovsky opines that reversing the amnesties would not pose a significant legal obstruction. “The decision on granting amnesty is a generally binding legal stipulation, whereas all generally binding legal stipulations may not only be adopted, but also amended, revised, or canceled,” he stressed. Hrusovsky rushed to say that Meciar’s amnesties were not amnesties in the legal sense, as they were granted to an undefined number of people.
As the incumbent parliament is in the final phase of its operation, a new chance to cancel Meciar’s amnesties will come only after the early parliamentary elections this March.
This was already the sixth attempt to cancel the amnesties granted by Vladimir Meciar. Meciar, leader of the now non-parliamentary party LS-HZDS and former three-time prime minister, granted amnesties during his brief presidential incumbency to protect unknown perpetrators involved in the case of abduction of former President Michal Kovac’s son to Austria in 1995. Investigators believed that former boss of the Slovak intelligence service SIS Ivan Lexa masterminded the kidnapping.
Ex-spy boss Ivan Lexa, once the most wanted Slovak fugitive, was facing charges of several serious criminal cases including abduction, sabotage, robbery, treason, misuse of power and other white-collar crimes. In addition, he was accused of having ordered the murder of Robert Remias in March 1996 by underworld boss Miroslav Sykora. Ivan Lexa was alleged to have done this to prevent witnesses testifying about Slovak President Michal Kovac’s son’s abduction to Austria in 1995. However, in the most serious charges issued against him Ivan Lexa is shielded by an amnesty granted by Vladimir Meciar.
SITA