A Finnish diplomat who says he was wrongly accused of spying for the former East Germany's Stasi secret service is seeking damages in a court case that opened Monday in Helsinki. Alpo Rusi, 58, now an advisor to the president of the United Nations General Assembly, is asking for 500,000 euros (675,000 dollars) in damages from the Finnish state.
He says he missed out on several job opportunities because of the spying allegations and hopes the court case will clear his name once and for all. Police opened investigations in May 2002 against Rusi and his older brother Jukka, now deceased, based on information from the Finnish intelligence agency Supo, which suspected them of passing information to Stasi agents.
Rusi, who was a student at the time, vehemently denied the claims, while Jukka, a government information officer, partially admitted the allegations but was never charged before his death. The preliminary investigation was closed in June 2003 due to a lack of evidence and while the Finnish justice system never found Rusi guilty, it never declared him innocent either.
Rusi did not appear personally in court on Monday, but was represented by his lawyer Olli Santanen who presented his case. Hearings were expected to last until next week, and a verdict was due in mid-September.
Among the witnesses due to be called during the trial were former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, for whom Rusi worked as a close advisor, and former prime minister Paavo Lipponen. The Rusi brothers are the only Finns to have been targeted by the Finnish justice system for suspected Stasi links. In an interview with AFP prior to the opening of the trial, Rusi said he was a victim of Supo's methods, which he called a "product of the culture of the Cold War and cooperation with the KGB."
Finland lived for many years under the threat of its imposing eastern neighbour, the Soviet Union, and the influence of its intelligence agency the KGB. Rusi said the Stasi had opened a file on him and his brother but while Jukka's contained more than 100 documents his was empty. He was at a loss to explain why the Stasi had started a file on him.
"I was never a leftist. I even called for the public condemnation in Finland of the occupation of Czechoslovakia" by the Soviet Union in 1968, he said. Like many in Finland, including parliament speaker Sauli Niinistoe, he has called for Supo to make public the Stasi files concerning Finland which the US Central Intelligence Agency handed over in the early 1990s.
The so-called Rosenholz files were grabbed by the CIA after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and given to Germany in 2003. They contain information on 290,000 people and some 57,000 accounts of undercover operations.
Law professor Ari-Matti Nuutila said Monday he was sceptical about Rusi's chances of winning the case. "I have strong doubts about whether Alpo Rusi will get any compensation whatsoever," he told AFP.
"The prerequisite is that he has to show not only that there's been a mistake made by Supo but also that these mistakes have in effect really caused financial harm. "He's claiming his reputation was damaged and (the allegations) disturbed his professional career, but on the other hand he's now an ambassador - the harmful effect on his career requires some evidence," he said.
On Monday, Rusi's lawyer Olli Santanen told Finnish news agency STT that Supo did not do its work properly. "Supo neglected to carry out the central and basic investigations," he said. The state's lawyer Aarno Arvela insisted however there was no basis for Rusi's claims.
"No mistake has been made, neither by the police nor the prosecutor or authorities in general. Procedures have gone according to the law and followed totally normal circumstances. There is no reason for any compensation," he told AFP.