Arson trial: Neo-Nazi refuses to testify, wiretaps show arsonists’ cynicism
The neo-Nazi who provided burn medication to one of the defendants after the Vítkov arson attack exercised her right not to testify in court today. Judge Miloslav Studnička read a transcript of her testimony from the preliminary proceedings into the record instead, the Mediafax agency reports.
In her previous testimony, Martina Ondřejková said Jaromír Lukeš had knocked on her window after the attack looking for something to treat burns. “I gave him an aerosol can of panthenol and asked what he needed it for. He said it was for David and didn’t want to say more. When David Vaculík came by a few days later to say good-bye because he was going to Ireland, I saw his hand was burned,” Mediafax quotes from her original testimony.
During a later conversation, she was apparently joking with Lukeš: “So that’s why you needed that panthenol for burns. He just waved his hand and said: Well…” The witness had met the defendants at neo-Nazi concerts; her husband plays in one such band. Mediafax reports police originally suspected her of having prior knowledge of the attack. “I first learned of the attack when it was reported on the radio. It did occur to me that his burns might have been related to the arson, but I wasn’t sure. I didn’t report it to the police because I was afraid of revenge from whoever did it, the neo-Nazis or the Roma. I have a young daughter and I’m pregnant,” she told police.
The trial continued with more police wiretap recordings of the defendants. The recordings seem to show that two months after the attack – while the victim Natálka was fighting for her life – Müller and Vaculík were having a fine time, making jokes, laughing and singing. News server iDNES.cz reports they evidently did not suspect the police were on their trail and could hear every word they said.
According to Markus Pape, the attorney-in-fact for the victimized Romani family, at least two of the defendants committed other crimes after the arson. For example, iDNES.cz reports they defaced several police stations in the Bruntál district with paint. “Defendant Müller at one point clearly tells Vaculík, with whom he is travelling in a car, that he purchased the paint. That’s what they used that night to deface police buildings in several places,” iDNES.cz quotes Pape. “The detectives were listening live while those two attacked the police buildings.”
Pape insists that while the Vítkov arson attack may have been the largest of its kind, it is only one of many such actions perpetrated by neo-Nazis from Moravia and Silesia. “It’s too bad the police did not thoroughly investigate the many other Molotov cocktail attacks previously committed in the Bruntál district. If they had investigated those matters as attempted murders, not just as misdemeanors or reckless endangerment, they could have asked for wiretaps earlier and Vítkov might not have happened, because they would have apprehended these neo-Nazis long ago,” iDNES.cz quotes Pape as saying. He is concerned police may never successfully complete their investigations of the earlier, unexplained Molotov cocktail attacks.
