Secret Police

Justice has not quite caught up with retired army Gen. Manuel Contreras, chief of the notorious secret police under this nation's former military government. But an Italian court Friday increased his debt to society by 20 years. The court convicted and sentenced Contreras, in absentia, for ordering a 1975 attempt to kill an exiled Chilean politician in Rome.

Manuel Contreras. The name brings back cruel memories in Chile, nightmare scenes of persecution, torture and murder. For many Chileans, Contreras was to dictator Augusto Pinochet what Heinrich Himmler was to Adolf Hitler. Unlike Himmler, however, the once-feared chief of Pinochet's secret police is alive, well, free and reportedly prosperous. A retired army general in good standing, Contreras lives these days on a secluded ranch in southern Chile.

East Germany's new-found democracy suffered another blow Monday as a third party leader faced allegations of spying for the secret police. Meanwhile, state prosecutors dropped treason charges against toppled Communist leader Erich Honecker and three top aides, including the former chief of the reviled Stasi security apparatus.

With a belated assist from the former KGB, the widow of Soviet dissident Andrei D. Sakharov inaugurated a library Saturday with thousands of pages of writings by him, letters to him and secret police files on him. The archive, neatly arranged in cardboard boxes on tall metal shelves in the apartment building where Sakharov lived, is the first collection of such material in one place for public examination.

"Kawasaki's Rose" is about secrets and lies, about truths that have been hidden, then revealed, then hidden again. This intricate, powerful, unsettling film brings us into a world of profound moral complexities where facile judgments must be suspended because even the best people can become complicit in evil. Directed by the veteran Czech team of director Jan Hrebejk and writer Petr Jarchovsky (responsible for the superb Oscar-nominated "Divided We Fall"), "Kawasaki's Rose" peels away layers to reveal even deeper ones.

The peaceful revolution that swept away Communist rule in Czechoslovakia six months ago was engineered jointly by leaders of the secret police in Moscow and Prague, the British Broadcasting Corp. has reported. A BBC television documentary contends that secret police leaders in both the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia conspired to bring down the hard-line Communist leadership in Prague because it rejected Mikhail S. Gorbachev's reforms in the Soviet Union.

Just mention Bartolomejska Street and it conjures up chilling images of police oppression. The narrow, Old Town roadway was home to the country's most dreaded law enforcement agencies of the Communist era. But today Bartolomejska is mostly quiet except for the incessant banging of construction crews at building No. 9, the former headquarters and interrogation center of the notorious StB secret police.

Expectations are quickly growing here that the arrest of a deposed secret police chief will lead to the seizure of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Rade Markovic, taken into custody Friday on suspicion of murder in the deaths of four aides to a former opposition leader, was head of the secret police in Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic.

The man who served as chief of the secret police for Slobodan Milosevic was arrested, authorities said Saturday--a move that could signal that Yugoslavia's new leaders are preparing to arrest the former president. Rade Markovic's arrest was reported by the independent B-92 Radio and confirmed by police officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. It was not immediately clear what charges he faced. Markovic was fired last month when the new Serbian government was elected.

Now that the Chilean Supreme Court has sentenced a former secret police chief to prison for ordering a 1976 assassination in Washington, D.C., this nervous nation is asking: Will he go peacefully? After Tuesday's Supreme Court decision to uphold a seven-year sentence for retired army Gen. Manuel Contreras, 66, the former secret police chief told a television interviewer: "I am not going to any jail as long as there is no real justice."