Czech woman who threw bricks at police during anti-Romani demo gets suspended sentence

On Wednesday, 5 November the District Court in Ostrava handed down its sentence against 19-year-old Petra Barnošáková for throwing several pieces of brick or rocks at police officers intervening against an anti-Romani demonstration in the Přívoz quarter of Ostrava last August. Barnošáková confessed to throwing the objects.  

The court took into consideration the fact that prior to the incident, the defendant had lived a law-abiding life. She said she attended the 24 August 2013 demonstration on her own, allegedly out of curiosity.  

"I wanted to see how things work at a demonstration like that," she said prior to the opening of the main hearing of her case. On the day in question she joined the mob marching through the streets of Ostrava.

When the situation escalated, Barnošáková joined the attacks on police officers. "I let myself get carried away with the mob. I threw things about 10 times, but I never hit anyone. What I threw never even made it over there [to where the officers were]," she said.

The court has sentenced her to one year in prison, suspended for two years. She has accepted the sentence and will not appeal.

The state attorney will not be appealing either. The sentence has now taken effect.

"Your probation has just begun. Be careful," the judge warned the convicted teenager.  

Barnošáková claims she went to the demonstration by herself, where she got to know a fellow demonstrator. "We lived together for almost a year after that," she said.

She insists that she decided to participate solely so she could express her opinion. In her view, Romani people are "favored" in Czech society and she doesn’t like it.

Several anti-Romani demonstrations took place in Ostrava last year. Most of them involved outbreaks of unrest, the most extensive of which took place precisely in August.  

Police have charged 30 people with involvement in those events. Detectives are primarily using footage from the CCTV cameras that recorded what was going on in the streets to identify suspects.  

More than one girl has been charged with participating in the violence, the youngest of whom was 16 years old. As many as 300 police officers participated in the intervention, 21 of whom were injured.