Alleged extremist leaves Czech ruling ODS - party official

Martin Bacik, who has allegedly contacts with extremists, left the Czech senior ruling Civic Democratic Party (ODS) today, Pavel Hamza, manager of the ODS Moravian-Silesian branch, told CTK, but Bacik dismissed it.

He told CTK he had only decided to resign from the post of a treasurer of the ODS local branch in Bohumin, but he remains an ODS member.

Bacik said the Bohumin branch’s council would decide on his party membership on Tuesday.
Hamza, however, insists that Bacik today announced he would terminate his membership.

The iDnes server reported on Saturday that Bacik, a 23-year-old student of the private CEVRO Institute, organised some meetings of the National Corporativism (NK) extremist organisation that was listed in the BIS counter-intelligence report among the groups that affected the neo-Nazi movement in the Czech Republic in 2006.
The server wrote that Bacik figured in photographs from radicals’ meetings.

Bacik denies having any connection with extremists. He told iDnes he had tried to penetrate the NK to persuade its members that their ideals were wrong.

The server also reported that Bacik was first a member of the far-right Republicans of Miroslav Sladek, which he left in 2005 to join the nationalist National Party (NS). Later he applied for ODS membership.

According to CTK information, Bacik was investigated by the police on suspicion of having included the names of people into the National Party’s list of election candidates without their knowledge. The NS then had to withdraw its list of candidates in Bohumin two days before the local elections in 2006.

Bohumin Mayor Petr Vicha (Social Democrats, CSSD) told CTK on Saturday he had unofficial information that Basic was given a suspended sentence in this connection, but Bacik categorically declined it.