Czech trial of eight charged with promoting neo-Nazism to resume

The District Court for Prague 1 will be returning on 6 October to a case of several former members of the now-defunct Workers’ Party (Dělnická strana – DS) and other right-wing extremists charged with promoting neo-Nazism. The scheduling was announced by www.justice.cz, which is the official website of the Czech judiciary.  

Members of the group, according to the indictment, participated in promoting the National Resistance movement and in convening neo-Nazi events, for which they face anywhere between three and eight years in prison if convicted. All eight were previously acquitted, but that decision was overturned on appeal.

The courts began addressing the case in 2010 and it has already been before several venues. The District Court acquitted the eight defendants in October 2012.

At the time the court expressed serious criticsm of the work of the police, saying they had not obtained enough evidence for a conviction. For that reason the court reportedly had no option but to acquit the defendants.

That verdict, however, was overturned by a higher court. The indictment describes a total of four criminal acts.

The first charge is that Patrik Vondrák, the former chair of the Prague organization of the now-defunct DS; Michaela Rodová (née Dupová), a former DS party member; Richard Lang; Petr Fryč, a DS candidate in the EP elections; and Filip Vávra, a longtime activist on the ultra-right scene, posted promotional materials for the neo-Nazi National Resistance organization in the center of Prague on the evening of 4 December 2008. The second charge is that Milan Hroch, the former chair of the DS organization in the Vysočina Region, Lang, Rodová (née Dupová), Vondrák and former DS party members Martin Václavek and Daniel Zavadil are guilty of organizing and carrying out an illegal assembly and march on 6 June 2009 in the town of Jihlava.            

A municipal official shut down that event immediately once it began. It had been announced as a "memorial march" to honor the memories of victims of the Second World War, but its actual purpose, according to the indictment, was to honor the memories of fallen Nazi SS members and Wehrmacht soldiers.

Rodová (née Dupová) has also been charged with creating and running the Resistance Women Unity (RWU) website, which police say is the women’s branch of the ultra-right National Resistance group. In addition she is also suspected of organizing and carrying out a concert of so-called "white power music" in February 2009 in the town of Srby (Kladno district).