Czech prosecutor says 2013 arson attempt not racially motivated

A man who attempted to set fire to a building occupied by Romani families in České Budějovice on 14 July last year is evidently facing a punishment on the lower end of the scale. The state prosecutor does not believe his crime to have been racially motivated and has instead called it "the behavior of a drunkard".

Last summer Josef Stach emptied a canister of diesel around an apartment building on Novohradská Street and did his best to set it on fire. Romani occupants of the building stopped him and called the police. 

At the time of the incident, demonstrations against Romani people and "welfare abuse" were escalating at the Máj housing estate just a few kilometers away. "We saw him from the window, our guys grabbed him and called the officers," a mother of four who lives in the building said.  

The incident took place at around 9 PM and firefighters came to the scene to clean the stains from the sidewalk. The man poured the fuel around the two-story building and some of it flowed into the basement through small ground-level windows.

Had Stach succeeded in lighting the fuel, he would have caused a tragedy, as dozens of children live in the building. "He’s a recidivist, he was drunk, he wasn’t targeting Romani people," police spokesperson Jiří Matzner said at the time. 

"I remember almost nothing. I only remember that some people threw themselves at me and I ended up in hospital," Stach claimed during his court appearance.

At the time of the crime the perpetrator had a blood alcohol level of 2.77 permille. He insists he only meant to clean the sidewalk of a bad-smelling mess.

Even though the perpetrator was evidently shouting in the street about "Gypsies" and about setting the building on fire, he repeated his claim to the court that he has nothing against Romani people and apologized to the building occupants. State prosecutor Josef Richtr did not find his behavior racially motivated, saying that Stach should be treated for alcoholism. 

Witnesses testified that Stach poured the canister of diesel around the building while shouting that he hates "Gypsies" and was going to burn the place down, then started snapping a cigarette lighter near the fuel. News server iDNES.cz has reported that resident Gejza Baláž testified during the trial that he knew Stach from a previous job.   

"I don’t know what got into him, he’d never said anything against Romani people. I smelled liquor on him. He had definitely had too much to drink, but I was not afraid he was going to set the building on fire," Baláž said.  

The trial also reviewed the expert findings of the firefighters, which stated that the fuel could never have been set alight given the climatic conditions at the time. However, the hearings also revealed that when Stach purchased the canister at a filling station, his original purchase was for gasoline and he apparently filled the canister with diesel by mistake.  

Experts say gasoline would have caught fire and endangered the building. Markus Pape, attorney-in-fact for the victims, pointed that fact out during the trial. 

The building is occupied predominantly by families with young children, who remain traumatized by the incident to this day. Pape is seeking compensation for eight of them totaling CZK 800 000.

Jan Souček, defense attorney, is seeking an acquittal. "I could imagine that my client might be accused of rioting, violence against the building occupants, or making criminal threats, but not of reckless endangerment when nothing happened," he said. 

Stach faces between three and eight years in prison if convicted. The court will make its ruling next Friday.