Journalist, dissident and politician Jiri Ruml dies

The respected journalist, publicist and former dissident, Jiri Ruml, has died. Mr Ruml lost his long and hard battle against cancer on Friday night, at the age of 78 years. The father of former Interior Minister and Senator Jan Ruml is mainly known for his active engagement in the underground dissident movement in the 1960s and 1970s. He was a spokesperson for the Charter 77 human rights manifesto and co-founder of the samizdat paper Lidove Noviny. In the early 1990s, he headed a parliamentary commission to investigate the StB Soviet-era secret police forces and was honoured with a Medal of Merit by former president Vaclav Havel in 2001.