After a closed session on Wednesday (31-5), the Constitutional Court of the Slovak Republic decided to overturn the controversial Mečiar amnesties. In 1998, Vladimír Mečiar, Prime Minister and acting president at the time, stopped investigations into two criminal cases through the issuing of amnesties. The cases involved the kidnapping of the son of the former president Michal Kováč, a thwarted referendum, and the murder in 1996 of police officer Robert Remiáš, who served as a contact for a key witness of the abduction. As some deemed the overturning of the amnesties unconstitutional, the Constitutional Court had the final say. With the amnesties now overturned, halted criminal investigations could commence.
Gavin Shoebridge, Photo: TASR
