Quick Facts
Biography
Algirdas Paleckis is a Lithuanian diplomat, politician and columnist.
Biography
Algirdas Paleckis was born on May 20, 1971 in Bern, Switzerland to a family of diplomat Justas Vincas Paleckis. In 1994 Paleckis graduated from Vilnius University with a master's degree in journalism and international relations.
Career
From 1997 to 2001 A. Paleckis was the 1st secretary at Lithuania's Permanent Mission to the EU in Brussels. From 2001 to 2003 he was the Head of West European Division at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania.
- From November 15, 2004 to April 17, 2007 he was a member of Lithuanian Parliament.
- From January 24, 2005 to May 5, 2007 Paleckis was an assemblyman of the Council of Europe
From 2007 to 2008 he worked as a Vice-Mayor of capital city Vilnius. In 2008 he founded the Frontas Party and was its leader until November 2014. Currently A. Paleckis is a political analyst.
He is fluent in Lithuanian, English, French, Russian and German.
Criminal prosecution
In 2011, Lithuanian authorities had initiated prosecution against Paleckis for his alleged denial of Soviet aggression against Lithuania, As part of his journalistic research, Paleckis claimed he had found several witnesses and ballistic assessments that seemed to indicate that there were secret snipers on the roof of the Vilnius TV centre who were shooting into the civilians. He then went on to state publicly that “it appears that in January 1991 our own people were shooting at their natives”.A Vilnius court had vindicated Paleckis in January 2012. The prosecution had appealed, and Paleckis was sentenced to a fine of 10,400 litas on June 12, 2012.