Kohl blocks release of Stasi files

Kohl case means Stasi records can only be released with individual consent

BERLIN, Germany -- Former Chancellor Helmut Kohl has blocked attempts to make public Stasi secret police files on him.

Communist East Germany had compiled a dossier of about 2,500 pages of wiretap transcripts on the German leader who was the driving force behind reunification.

Lawyers for Kohl said the ex-Chancellor's dignity would be damaged if the documents had been released.

The verdict, which is final, was preceded by two years of dispute over a law regulating access to the Stasi archive that was passed by Kohl's government shortly after unification in 1990.

The ruling on Friday means the archive can only release records on someone with that person's explicit consent.

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Marianne Birthler, a former East German democracy activist who now oversees the old communist spy agency's archive, requested the hearing at the Federal Administrative Court.

Birthler argued that efforts to understand the Stasi legacy would falter if individual consent was needed to make records public.

She has urged parliament to rewrite passages of the disputed law to make sure the files are not sealed permanently.

Judges last year ruled the records could remain sealed as the eavesdropping allegedly made Kohl a victim of the Stasi.

The federal agency which administers the files says many books and articles based on research into the archives may now have to be withdrawn from publication, and records on officials of East Germany's regime and 2,000 files relating to Nazi war crimes may be locked away.

Kohl case resurrects funding scandal

Journalists and historians have also asked to see the Stasi records, prompting speculation that they could shed light on a party financing scandal that has disgraced Kohl and tainted his conservative Christian Democratic Union party since his 1998 election defeat.

Kohl, 71, who did not attend Friday's hearing, has previously admitted taking almost $1 million in illegal cash donations for the CDU during the 1990s, but has refused the to name the donors.

Kohl argued the wiretaps were obtained illegally and he deserved protection from damage to his "human dignity," saying any Stasi notes on him are bound to be full of phoney information.

Many files of other prominent Germans -- mostly former East German officials -- have been released under the law passed by Kohl's government.

East German civil rights groups insist the files should be opened to reveal the extent of the hated Stasi's incessant spying.

Previously, only details about the private lives of prominent Germans spied on by the Stasi have been shielded from public view.

Figure skater Katarina Witt last month won a temporary court order sealing her Stasi file while her objections were reviewed.

Witt, an Olympic gold medalist for East Germany in 1984 and 1988, sued to prevent the release of more than 1,300 pages from her file to a journalist. Like Kohl, she claims she was a victim of the Stasi.