October 14, 2008	Tuesday	Shawwal 14, 1429

PRAGUE: Czech-born writer Milan Kundera denied on Monday accusations that he denounced a Czech deserter to the communist police in 1950.

“I am absolutely taken aback by something that I’d never expect, that I didn’t even know about yesterday, and that never happened. I didn’t know the man at all,” Kundera told the CTK news agency.

The Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes on Monday published a police report saying Kundera had denounced Miroslav Dvoracek, a young pilot who deserted to become a US-backed intelligence agent, and who was later sentenced to 22 years in prison.

Kundera, who has been refusing to speak to the press for years, said the institute and the media had committed “an attack on an author,” adding that the police document discovered by the historians was a mystery to him.

Dvoracek had left Czechoslovakia after the 1948 communist coup. In a refugee camp in Germany, he was recruited by US counter-espionage and sent back to his homeland, but his trip came to an unfortunate end.

“Today at 1600, student Milan Kundera, born April 1, 1929, address: Prague VII, student dormitory, King George street VI, came to the local police department and reported that student Iva Militka (...) had met her friend Miroslav Dvoracek in Klarov, Prague on that day...,” reads the police report published on the institute’s website (www.ustrcr.cz).

“Militka said Dvoracek had allegedly deserted the army and lived in Germany since the spring of last year following an illegal escape. A record in the wanted list has shown the man is sought by the Regional Police (...) to be arrested. Based on this finding, the above-mentioned officers stayed at the dormitory to guard the said Militka’s room. Dvoracek came to the room around 8pm and was detained.”

Dvoracek escaped a death penalty but was sentenced to 22 years in September 1950. In 1952, he was sent to work at a uranium mine, just like many political prisoners of that time. After his release in 1963, he left for Sweden where he lives now.

Dvoracek “knew he was informed on, so who did it makes no difference to him now,” his wife Marketa Dvoracek Novak told AFP on Monday. Her husband is now aged 80 and is in poor health after recently suffering a stroke.

“We’re not surprised” that Kundera’s name has surfaced in Czech media reports as the informant, she said, adding that Kundera “is a good writer but I am under no illusions about him as a human being.”—AFP