Secret Police

WARSAW -- A senior clergyman said yesterday that Poland's bishops will request a review of their Communist-era secret police files and send the findings to the Vatican, following a new archbishop's abrupt resignation over disclosures that he spied for the old regime. The bishops reached the agreement at a meeting aimed at dealing with the scandal that has stunned the heavily Roman Catholic country. "The bishops have confirmed the will to carry out a full verification of the truth about ourselves and about the people of the church," said Archbishop Josef Michalik of Przemysl, head of Poland's...

BUDAPEST - Istvan Csurka, an anti-Soviet dissident playwright and later a far-right nationalist politician who was criticized at home in Hungary and abroad for his anti-Semitic articles, died Saturday at age 77. Mr. Csurka's death was announced by his family. He had been hospitalized in recent weeks with an undisclosed illness, but no other details were immediately available. Often compared to France's xenophobic National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, Mr. Csurka opposed Hungary's membership in NATO and the European Union, but his political activities dwindled...

WARSAW -- A second prominent Catholic clergyman resigned yesterday after allegations about his links to the Communist-era secret police, and the prospect that more clerics may have been compromised threatened the church's reputation as a bastion of opposition to the old regime. A day after Warsaw's new archbishop stunned the faithful by resigning minutes before his formal installation ceremony, the Rev. Janusz Bielanski resigned as rector of Krakow's prestigious Wawel Cathedral, burial place of Polish kings and queens, Krakow church spokesman Robert Necek said.

Istvan Csurka, a Hungarian anti-Soviet dissident playwright and later far-right nationalist politician who was criticized at home and abroad for his anti-semitic articles, died Saturday at age 77. Csurka's death was announced by his family. He had been hospitalized in recent weeks with an undisclosed illness, but no other details were immediately available. Often compared to France's xenophobic National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, Csurka opposed Hungary's membership in NATO and the European Union, but his political activities dwindled after a stinging defeat in the 2006...

The long black leather coats that struck fear into Soviet citizens as part of the ominous dress code for Stalin’s secret police appear to be making a comeback. The security forces who guard President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin are holding a state tender for 60 such coats and 60 shorter jackets. The website for state tenders showed the Federal Guards Service order is worth 3 million rubles ($108,000). The tender closes June 15. The Kremlin and security forces couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

LAGOS, Nigeria - Days before a car bombing at a UN headquarters in Nigeria that killed 23 people, the country's secret police arrested two men suspected of organizing the attack, authorities said yesterday, raising questions about why it was not averted. The State Security Service's statement to journalists said it also sought a third suspect they said had "Al Qaeda links" and recently returned from Somalia. It offered new evidence that the radical Muslim sect known locally as Boko Haram, which claimed responsibility for Friday's attack on the UN, has ties to Al Qaeda-affiliated terror...

Why do people keep stealing Liam Neeson’s stuff? The last time a man he played was in Europe, it was to get his teenage daughter back from sex traffickers in Paris. A lot of cars were crashed and even more bones were broken. The occasion was preposterous. It’s no less so this time. Now someone has stolen his identity. But while “Unknown,’’ which opens today, taps the same ludicrous action vein as “Taken,’’ it’s a good deal more visually coherent and less demanding on Neeson and his stunt doubles.

BERLIN — Baerbel Bohley, a prominent figure in the prodemocracy movement that helped end communist rule in the former East Germany, died yesterday. She was 65. The Robert Havemann Society, a group dedicated to the history of East Germany’s opposition that Ms. Bohley helped set up, said she died of cancer. Ms. Bohley, a painter who endured harassment by East Germany’s secret police, established New Forum with several others in September 1989. It became the most prominent opposition group in the final phase of hard-line communist rule.

BAGHDAD - It was seized from Jewish families and wound up soaking in sewage water in the basement of a secret police building. Rescued from the chaos that engulfed Baghdad as Saddam Hussein was toppled, it now sits in safekeeping in an office near Washington. Like this country’s once great Jewish community, the Iraqi Jewish Archive of books, manuscripts, records, and other materials has gone through turbulent times. Now another twist may be in store: Iraq wants it back. Iraqi officials say they will go to the United States, possibly next month, to...

IN THE recent approval in South Africa of the Protection of State Information bill, the African National Congress spit on the graves of thousands - whites and blacks and many journalists - who fought, were tortured, imprisoned and otherwise punished for speaking truth to power in pre-apartheid South Africa. Now the African National Congress is acting like the oppressors so many thousands gave their lives to fight. Under the provisions of the so-called "secrecy bill" a journalist who receives classified information indicating corruption or wrongdoing involving...

NEW YORK - The New York Police Department recommended increasing surveillance of thousands of Shi'ite Muslims and their mosques, based solely on their religion, as a way to sweep the Northeast for signs of Iranian terrorists, according to interviews and a newly obtained secret police document. The document offers a rare glimpse into the thinking of NYPD intelligence officers and how, when looking for potential threats, they focused their spying efforts on mosques and Muslims. Police analysts listed a dozen mosques from central Connecticut to the Philadelphia suburbs.

IN THE recent approval in South Africa of the Protection of State Information bill, the African National Congress spit on the graves of thousands - whites and blacks and many journalists - who fought, were tortured, imprisoned and otherwise punished for speaking truth to power in pre-apartheid South Africa. Now the African National Congress is acting like the oppressors so many thousands gave their lives to fight. Under the provisions of the so-called "secrecy bill" a journalist who receives classified information indicating...

The National Theatre of London's production of "Collaborators" will be shown at the Coolidge Corner Theatre at 7 p.m. Dec. 15. Offered as part of NT Live, the critically acclaimed play by John Hodge is set in Moscow in 1938, when a character played by Alex Jennings is commissioned to write a play about Stalin for the dictator's 60th birthday. The commission, to a suspected dissident stalked by the secret police, starts a lethal game of cat-and-mouse. Details about NT Live and tickets for the performance ($20 general, $17 Coolidge members)

LAGOS, Nigeria - Days before a car bombing at a UN headquarters in Nigeria that killed 23 people, the country's secret police arrested two men suspected of organizing the attack, authorities said yesterday, raising questions about why it was not averted. The State Security Service's statement to journalists said it also sought a third suspect they said had "Al Qaeda links" and recently returned from Somalia. It offered new evidence that the radical Muslim sect known locally as Boko Haram, which claimed responsibility for Friday's attack on the UN, has ties to Al Qaeda-affiliated terror...

CAIRO - When Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak resigned after 18 days of public demonstrations here last winter, Tahrir Square instantly took its place in the world's iconography of peaceful protest. Young men and women brandishing nothing more lethal than shoes and placards had toppled a dictator. One subversive slogan - "The people want the fall of the regime" - in the mouths of a million people overpowered a merciless police state. It was not bloodless; some 846 people were killed by police and regime thugs, according to an Egyptian government inquiry.

The long black leather coats that struck fear into Soviet citizens as part of the ominous dress code for Stalin’s secret police appear to be making a comeback. The security forces who guard President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin are holding a state tender for 60 such coats and 60 shorter jackets. The website for state tenders showed the Federal Guards Service order is worth 3 million rubles ($108,000). The tender closes June 15. The Kremlin and security forces couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

The National Theatre of London's production of "Collaborators" will be shown at the Coolidge Corner Theatre at 7 p.m. Dec. 15. Offered as part of NT Live, the critically acclaimed play by John Hodge is set in Moscow in 1938, when a character played by Alex Jennings is commissioned to write a play about Stalin for the dictator's 60th birthday. The commission, to a suspected dissident stalked by the secret police, starts a lethal game of cat-and-mouse. Details about NT Live and tickets for the performance ($20 general, $17 Coolidge members)

BEIJING — Chinese police have filed subversion charges against another human rights activist, the man’s wife said yesterday, the latest move against dissent since anonymous online calls urged Chinese to imitate prodemocracy protests in North Africa and the Middle East. Though the calls for demonstrations every Sunday have not drawn any overt protesters, the authoritarian government has reacted strongly. Human rights groups say more than 100 bloggers, lawyers, and activists have been detained.