Analysis:
What if the Czech MP clears the neo-Nazi?
Litvínov, 27.1.2014 10:06, (ROMEA)
Miroslav Kováč giving a speech as part of a
commemorative ceremony at Lety by Písek. Photo: František Kostlán
Tomio Okamura, known to the Czech public as
a more acceptable alternative to Tomáš Vandas, the chair of the ultra-right
Workers' Social Justice Party (DSSS), has paid a visit to neo-Nazi Vlastimil
Pechanec at the prison in Pardubice where he is serving a 17-year sentence for
the murder of Otto Absolon, a Romani man. Okamura believes Pechanec's trial by
three first-instance judges, three appeals court judges, and three Supreme
Court justices was manipulated and politicized.
Pechanec's previous requests for clemency
have failed. Now Okamura, in his position as an MP and politician, is striving
to "depoliticize" this scandal by calling for a retrial which he
hopes might result in either a sentence reduction or an acquittal, as well as
in Pechanec's release.
There is conjecture that when Absolon was
stabbed, two other people (also neo-Nazis) were in his physical proximity whose
descriptions might also match that of whoever perpetrated this crime.
Allegedly, one of those people is the nephew of the police officer who secured
the crime scene, while the other is the nephew of a former judge at the
Regional Court in Hradec Králové where Pechanec was eventually tried and
convicted.
Attorney Klára Samková is apparently
assisting this petition for a retrial. This former member of the TOP 09 party
is now the leading EP candidate for Okamura's Dawn of Direct Democracy (Úsvit)
party, best known for recently representing the perpetrators in the so-called
"machete scandal" and for her work with the Romani political party
Roma Civic Initiative (ROI) in the 1990s.
If Okamura and his team achieve a retrial
and the "clearing" of Pechanec's name, it would be unprecedented for
the Czech Republic. It would reveal that the Czech Republic is not really a
democratic state governed by the rule of law and based on respect for civil and
human rights and freedoms, but that its real face is that of a state based on
clientelism, corruption, and human rights violations (such as that of a right
to a fair trial), a state where laws and rights play a secondary, wild-card
role.
A successful retrial would prove that in
"sensitive" matters, the police, the state prosecutors and the courts
do not proceed impartially, but on the basis of what they believe is wanted by
politicians or the public. Another current example of this is the "judicial
mafia" scandal, which is revealing how politicized courts "function"
in the Czech Republic.
Such a precedent could make it possible to
reopen other "politicized" cases, such as those of Kajínek, Patrik
from Krupka, the machete attack in Nový Bor, or the case of the shooter in
Tanvald, which catapulted Lenka Bradáčová to the post of High State Prosecutor
in Prague. However, another question still hangs over all of this.
If Okamura succeeds, will the police
officers, the state attorneys and the nine judges who handled Pechanec's case
also be pursued for their own criminal liability? What kind of a reputation
will the Czech justice system ultimately earn for itself?
Justice is supposed to be blind. Our system
does a bad job of interpreting what the point of that blindness even is.
Miroslav
Kováč, translated by Gwendolyn Albert
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