Ice-skating: Skater battles over spy file
Figure skating star Katarina Witt stepped up her resistance to the release of her East German secret police file today, as the government agency that controls the files confirmed she was ‘‘significantly supported’’ by the Stasi.
‘‘It’s not about fear,’’ Witt told the mass-circulation Bild daily. ‘‘The point is that I don’t want to see my life spied on and laid open a second time.’’
Witt’s lawyer last week asked a Berlin court for a temporary injunction blocking the release of her Stasi file to journalists.
The Stasi files agency says that, at the court’s request, it will hold off releasing material on the 1984 and 1988 Olympic gold medalist.
However, spokesman Christian Booss today confirmed news reports that the agency considers Witt not only a victim but a beneficiary of the communist system a person who was ‘‘significantly supported by the Stasi’’.
Witt was a product of former East Germany’s powerful sports machine. She was among top athletes who enjoyed extra privileges, including freedom to travel abroad.
Witt has acknowledged she had contact with the secret police. But she stressed to Bild that she ‘‘never’’ worked for the Stasi ‘‘and that is very clear from the file’’.
