The trial of the last boss of the former secret service (ŠtB) in communist Czechoslovakia, Alojz Lorenc, will continue on October 16 after the Supreme Court overturned a ruling of the Higher Military Court in Trenčín, which had halted the prosecution of Lorenc. The case will be tried in Bratislava Military Court, but will not be open to the public because classified documents are to be presented.
Lorenc was sentenced in 1992 by the military court in Tabor, Czech Republic, to a four-year prison term for the illegal detentions of opponents of the communist regime between 1988 and 1989. However, after the split of the Czechoslovak federation on January 1, 1993, Lorenc, a Slovak national, took advantage of an international agreement barring the extradition of citizens to the law enforcement authorities of another country and refused to serve his sentence in a Czech prison.
Last December, the statute of limitations expired on the Czech prison sentence, and the Trenčín court ruled that Lorenc, now a successful businessman in Slovakia, could not be tried again on the same charges.
