Journalist Pekka Lehtinen, who currently works for the television network Nelonen, says that the Finnish Security Police (SUPO) did not leak information that former presidential advisor, Professor Alpo Rusi was under suspicion of having spied on behalf of East Germany.
Lehtinen revealed in the autumn of 2002, on YLE television news that SUPO suspected that Rusi had previously worked for the East German security agency Stasi. However, Rusi was never charged with any wrongdoing.
There had been claims that news that Rusi was under suspicion of espionage had leaked to YLE directly from SUPO. In an op-ed article in Tuesday’s Helsingin Sanomat, Lehtinen dismisses the claims as “complete nonsense”.
“The Security Police had nothing to do with the Rusi news, not in leaking it, and not in confirming the preliminary investigation”, Lehtinen writes in the article.
Helsinki District Court has ordered the state to pay Rusi compensation for damage caused by the information leak.
The case drew public attention again when a working group of the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of the Interior proposed the narrowing of the confidentiality of a journalist’s sources.
