- guardian.co.uk, Monday October 30 2000 00.43 GMT
Public prosecutors have opened an investigation into the claim by a former police officer that Austria's most controversial politician and 17 other high-ranking Freedom party (FPO) members waged a dirty-tricks campaign against their opponents using classified information.
Thirteen police officers from Vienna are suspected of having violated data protection laws as part of a group of FPO sympathisers in the police force, allegedly including Mr Haider's personal bodyguard.
The man who should be investigating the allegations, the far-right justice minister, Dieter Böhmdorfer, is also alleged to be involved.
The weekly newspaper Falter has claimed that during his years as Mr Haider's personal lawyer, Mr Böhmdorfer, who was singled out in September by the EU's report on Austria as the one government figure who should resign, used classified police files in court cases against the party's critics.
Mr Böhmdorfer has so far rejected calls from the opposition and the judges' union to resign.
"I've never obtained information illegally or got anyone else to do so on my behalf," he said through a spokesman.
The spying allegations, first made in a book by a former police officer and Freedom party activist, Josef Kleindienst, have grown into what has been dubbed "Austria's Watergate".
Mr Kleindienst says he was one of an elite group of hand-picked officers who, on behalf of leading FPO members, spied on anyone seen as a threat to the party's rise to power.
"We sifted through the archives and passed on the relevant information - anything from information about opponents' lifestyles to what cars they owned, where they lived, and any offences they or acquaintances had committed," he said.
Some officers were paid as much as £3,000 in return, he added.
Mr Haider, 50, is trying to spin the accusations in his favour, presenting himself as the "most spied upon politician in Austria" and claiming that "spying and the setting up of confidential files were things that happened under socialist interior ministers". He has called on the chancellor, Wolfgang Schüssel, to open an immediate investigation.
• Robin Cook will be the first European foreign minister since the sanctions were lifted to visit Austria today.
