Current MEP Prevails Over National Security Agency in Defamation Case
The Internal Security Service, Estonia's counterintelligence agency, will have to delete a passage in its 2011 yearbook accusing Center Party politician and current MEP Yana Toom of pressuring schools to lobby against the change over to Estonian as the language of instruction, after the Supreme Court passed on the chance to hear the case.
The Supreme Court late last week declined to review the decision from April in which an appeals court ruled that ISS has the right to collect information about Toom, but not publish it. The decision, which now cannot be appealed further, does not mean ISS must re-evaluate its conclusions, but must keep the text unpublished.
The court stopped short of requiring printed copies of the yearbook from being removed from libraries and other institutions.
The ISS yearbook in question is the one published in April 2012. The book discusses claimed attempts by the Russian Federation to work against the transition to Estonian as the language of instruction in 60 percent of upper secondary schools, and named several officials, such as Tallinn Deputy Mayor Mihhail Kõvart and Center Party MP Mihhail Stalnuhhin, then chairman of Narva City Council. The latter two have also sued on various grounds.