Dear Colleague,

 

As you know my parliamentary immunity was waived today. I would like to inform you shortly about the background of the request and the history of the case filed against me.

 

It is an important fact that the mission of the institute for which I act as director is to research the communist past. For the last decade I have been researching the activities of the communist secret services, among others, files concerning the repression of the 1956 revolution. As a consequence I stated on a television programme that having read one of his companion's incriminating testimony, I better understood the death sentence of a revolutionary executed in 1958. The daughter of the person concerned accused me of defamation, however I proved my statement with the help of a more than hundred page documentation of the National Archives. Consequently I won two lawsuits in a row. In spite of the closed proceedings the plaintiff has apparently not been able to come to terms with the judgment while she refuses to face the behavior of her late father. This lead to the renewal of the case and the request for the waiver of my immunity.

 

Dear Colleague, let me thank you for the time taken to read this statement. For me it is rather important to clarify that I did not do anything other than attempting to explore the historical truth and I need to face a lawsuit for nothing else but this reason.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

Ágnes Hankiss