Czech parliament strips immunity from Communist MP

...charge him on suspicion of torturing political prisoners as a prison guard in the 1980s.

The vote against Josef Vondruska came nearly 18 years after the fall of communist rule in the Czechs' non-violent "Velvet Revolution", and shows the central European country is still struggling to come to terms with its past.

Prosecutors had requested Vondruska's immunity be stripped.

Reading from the request in the chamber, deputy Miroslav Kala said Vondruska was accused of beating prisoner Jiri Volf unconscious with a truncheon on a number of occasions from 1980 to 1983.

Vondruska denies doing anything wrong while he worked at the Minkovice jail in the northern part of then Czechoslovakia.

"I worked honestly and responsibly, the same as hundreds of thousands of other people," he told parliament.

"I performed a job that is necessary for the state at any time, even today. I did not break the law in performing my job."

All parties but the Communists backed the vote. Prosecutors said they planned to charge him with abuse of power as a public official, which carries a sentence of up to 10 years.

Vondruska is one few communist-era officials pursued by authorities for suspected crimes since the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Only a handful have been jailed, as cases usually fail due to lack of evidence. Those put behind bars are usually only low-ranking officers rather than party leaders or the suspected masterminds of political repression.

Many ex-communist countries are still coming to grips with the past and have struggled to make public secret police archives that may hold information about the fallen regimes, who they spied on, who their agents were and what they did.

Earlier this year, the centre-right government won parliamentary approval to establish a research institution to study the Nazi and communist eras.