Home - Tuesday 21.1.2003
National Police Commissioner to ask Security Police about Stasi investigation
Finland's National Commissioner of Police Reijo Naulapää has asked the Security Police (SUPO) to submit a report on the current investigation into Finns suspected of collaborating with the East German espionage agency Stasi during the Cold War.
The Centre Party newspaper Suomenmaa reported on Tuesday that Naulapää had said that the Supreme Police Command had decided to call for a meeting with the SUPO head Seppo Nevala, as well as the leaders of the Stasi investigation.
Naulapää said that he wants to hear from SUPO if recent media attention on the subject gives any cause for special measures.
Political scientist Dr. Olli Rehn has recently accused the Security Police of succumbing to political pressure and deliberately slowing down the investigation to the detriment of one suspect - former Presidential aide Alpo Rusi.
Naulapää emphasises that it is not the purpose of the Supreme Police Command to pressure the Security Police to rush their investigation, adding that the criticism that has been voiced so far has been based on mere conjecture.
Also commenting on the issue was Interior Minister Ville Itälä (Nat. Coalition), who told the Finnish News Agency STT that he is sure that SUPO has dealt with the Stasi case in an appropriate manner.
Previously in HS International Edition:
Olli Rehn says Security Police broke law - Justice Minister wants SUPO to submit report on Stasi list (20.1.2003)
http://www.helsinki-hs.net/news.asp?id=20030121IE8
East Germany may have been the most police-ridden country in human history. It kept long, very long, dossiers on about a quarter of its 16 million people, plus a million more selected foreigners, primarily people in West Germany. Most of this information was collected by ordinary East Germans spying on each other at the behest of the Ministry for State Security (Stasi). Sometimes the arrangement was informal; neighbors agreed to have regular chats about people at work with other neighbors who worked more directly for the state. Many, on the other hand, were paid agents who had signed cooperation agreements with Stasi itself. Bosses and teachers wrote regular, elaborate reports on the opinions and activities of employees and students, who might in turn be writing similar reports on the bosses and teachers. In some cases that became well-publicized after reunification, the husbands of apparently happy marriages spied on their wives, and vice versa. Almost all dissidents "cooperated" with the regime to some degree. This sometimes took the form of actually informing on members of dissident groups. Many intellectuals, however, seem to have genuinely imagined themselves to be negotiating with the regime for eventual liberalization. The Ministry of State Security itself was straight out of Kafka. Its officials took degrees, doctorates, in the applied psychology of mind control and personal intimidation. Somewhere in the former East Germany even today, perhaps, there may be a library of really, really scary doctoral theses.
http://pages.prodigy.net/aesir/spy.htm
