Czech Police unable to find founder of Facebook page calling for murder of "gypsies"

During the past few weeks, various pages promoting hatred have turned up on Facebook in the Czech language with names such as "We demand gypsies be shot dead with impunity" (Požadujeme beztrestné vystřílení cikánů), "Disabled children must be mercilessly killed" (Postižené děti je třeba bez milosti zabíjet), or "My stoned wife is available for sex" (Nabízím na sex svou zfetovanou manželku). All of these pages have listed their telephone contact as that of a Jaromír Merhaut, who has nothing whatsoever to do with them.

News server Echo24.cz reports that Merhaut has managed to track down the computer used to establish these pages. He first turned to the police and filed a criminal report. 

More and more pages with his name and contact information kept surfacing online, including one called "Let’s go murder dogs with impunity" (Pojďme beztrestně zabíjet psy). "About 10 people called me up because of them. Some of them began the conversation harshly, but I soon explained to them that I have nothing to do with these pages," says Merhaut, who is from Zlín.

Merhaut believes the attacks could be due to a sharp exchange of opinions he engaged in online during the Czech presidential campaign. Since police were not making much progress with the investigation, Merhaut, who works as a technician and runs websites about rock music, attempted to track down the author of the hateful pages on his own. 

Merhaut succeeded with the aid of a "trap" in a Facebook post. "When the operator of that page clicked on it, he found himself on a website controlled by me and I discovered his IP logs. He evidently is no Einstein if he let himself be trapped like that," Merhaut told Echo24.cz.

Merhaut was therefore able to acquire the contact information of the perpetrator’s internet service provider (ISP) and then gave the information to police, who contacted them. They succeeded in locating the computer used to create the Facebook pages.

"This was the first time the police have ever contacted us over Facebook. In the past they have addressed cases of e-mail threats or fraud during online auctions with us," said Lukáš Ronge of the Humlet company, which is based in Trutnov – on the other side of the country from Mr Merhaut.

"Police told me last Tuesday that the person concerned, a woman from Trutnov, was asked to give a statement. She insists she knows nothing about the pages, that she has wifi at home that is not password-protected, and that someone probably hacked her computer," Merhaut says.

Police do not yet know what to do about the increased numbers of such pages abusing Facebook. "Misuse of social networking sites is permanently on the rise," confirms Karel Kuchařík, head of the Cybercrime Division at the Police Presidium in Prague.

Ronge admits that it is possible to hack an unsecured computer, but proceeded to tell Echo24.cz that "I think that in this case the wifi was secured with a password." For his part, Kuchařík does not want to discuss the investigation, saying "I am not currently authorized to comment on that case."

Merhaut’s case is just one of many. He has been most bothered by the fact that the unknown hater has been insulting his children and his wife, using Facebook to claim Merhaut has had sex with his own son.

The anti-racist ROMEA association also protested against the hateful page that called for the murder of "gypsies". "I believe the authors weren’t as interested in attacking Roma as they were in harming me," says Merhaut.

"When I wanted to show the Facebook pages to the police in Zlín, I was a bit startled when they told me they don’t have internet," Merhaut told Echo24.cz. Czech police officers have very restricted access to the online world, and their command claims the reason is to prevent data leaks. 

Merhaut says that from the questions the police officers in his district department asked him, it was evident that they were not very well-oriented in the issue, but he says "they were helpful". "The case is being investigated, I can’t say anything more," Detective Ladislav Ovesný of Zlín told Echo24.cz. 

Merhaut insists that whoever is attacking him now is the same individual or group of people who exchanged sharp opinions with him on Facebook during the Czech presidential campaign. He alleges that the current creator(s) of these online lampoons attacked him back then with vulgarities over his support for presidential candidate Karel Schwarzenberg and says he repaid them in kind (although he claims to have not used vulgarities but "just" phrases like "red scum" in his responses).  

Merhaut believes detectives in Zlín have been told that his case should be considered a misdemeanor offense against "civil coexistence" and not a felony. He disagrees with this and wants to eventually appeal any such outcome.

"The creation of fictional profiles is not a violation of our Criminal Code," police officer Kuchařík told Echo24.cz. He believes police would have to prove that "the rights of the person concerned were seriously violated and that the person has suffered serious harm as a result of this behavior" for it to be considered criminal.

Determining serious harm is reportedly problematic. Detectives believe it is only clear in cases where a perpetrator takes over someone’s existing accounts without authorization and exploits an identity to establish contact with others or ask for money.    

The police also warn that communications with Facebook, whose European branch is headquartered in Ireland, is an arduous process. If a user of the social network reports a page as hateful or inappropriate, the automatic response will be that the content "does not violate community principles". 

These complaints are evaluated by a robot which evidently is not enabled for the Czech language – and the foreign staffers of Facebook evidently are not either. For example, Facebook pages calling for violence against Romani people were not shut down until a larger number of people drew the company’s attention to them.

The Czech Police could ask their American colleagues for help in searching for the creators of such content, but they too have achieved success in only some cases. "As far as online manifestations of extremism that are actionable in this country, the data we need are not made available to us, but we have had a different experience with offenses against morality – for those they give us the information we ask for right away," a police specialist told Echo24.cz.

In the view of this police specialist, it would be ideal if international law could be unified in this area. Czech attorney Klára Kalibová, who has experience with cybercrime cases, says attacks against specific individuals are also actionable under American law (unlike attacks against groups). 

"Czech police officers unfortunately have a minimum of experience with cases of online abuse and are groping in the dark on this issue. That is a more fundamental problem than my particular case, because there are hundreds, if not thousands, of such cases," Merhaut notes.