Legal battle continues over minister’s sacking from past post

A legal battle over whether the current Minister of Culture, Daniel Herman, was wrongly dismissed as the head of the state Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (ÚSTR) deepened on Wednesday. Prague’s Municipal Court overturned an earlier ruling that Herman was wrongly dismissed with the case now returning to the lower court. Herman was dismissed by the institute’s board in April 2013 on the grounds that they were dissatisfied with his work. He became a Christian Democrat member of parliament and later minister following elections in October 2013. The institute stores the files of the former Communist secret police and carries out historical analysis of the Nazi occupation and communist regime in former Czechoslovakia.