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Man who helped track down the Vítkov arsonists received threats

22 October 2012
3 minute read

The trial of the arsonists who set fire to the home of a Roma family in Vítkov last year continued today at the Regional Court in Ostrava. The court revealed that an unidentified man has twice sent threats through the mayor of the town of Otice to the witness who put police officers onto the trail of the Vítkov arsonists. Fearing retaliation, the witness has since refused to testify in court. Today the presiding judge read a document confirming the threats had been made into the record.

According to the court, someone telephoned the mayor of Otice, where the witness lives, on the official line at the mayor’s home. “It was a man. He spoke Czech and did not attempt to disguise his voice. He said ‘Where are you hiding that firefighter-informer?’” the judge read into the record. The man made two such calls. When asked his name, the caller identified himself as a “decent person”.

People also reported the witness was threatened at the end of May at a social event organized in Otice by local firefighters. The judge read testimony into the record that a man had stepped onto the dance floor during the evening and begun to shout at the witness that he hoped he would burn to death one day. Two different people attending the event separately informed police of the incident.

A 26-year-old man has confessed to the verbal assault and is now under investigation. However, the man claims he was very drunk at the time and does not remember much of the situation. “People had started talking about what had happened in Vítkov and I joined the conversation. Then they started attacking me and took me outside,” the presiding judge quoted the young man as having testified.

The witness concerned contacted police shortly after the arson attack. On the day following the crime, he overheard a telephone conversation between an acquaintance of his and one of the defendants. He connected the media reports of the arson with what he had overheard and reported everything to police.

The presiding judge also read into the record the testimony of a 17-year-old witness who had asked to be excused from testifying in person for medical reasons. “That house was in a catastrophic state, I don’t even know whether it had hygienic facilities. It wasn’t possible to determine exactly who lived there besides Mr Malý, the people kept changing,“ the Mediafax agency quotes the witness as having testified.

The hearing then continued with the protocols of the searches conducted last year by police at the homes of the four defendants being read into the record. Mediafax reports that police officers found three mobile phones, black gloves, a black balaclava, nationalist writings, a calendar with neo-Nazi symbols and a neo-Nazi manual in the home of Václav Cojocaru, who says the officers confiscated many things unrelated to the case and have returned only his sister’s camera and automobile. Cojocaru said he got the neo-Nazi propaganda materials at various musical events “probably to re-sell them”; he then hid them away at home.

Ivo Müller had a black knuckleduster, a tonfa, black fingerless gloves, and a set of torches in his home at the time of the search. Müller said none of the objects had anything to do with extremism and that the torches were for a family garden party, not neo-Nazi marches. In David Vaculík’s home officers discovered black gloves weighted with sand, bandanas, DVDs and CDs on racist themes, a flag with an image of a lion, a t-shirt with the legend “Free Resistance Litvínov”, copies of the “Worker’s News” (Dělnické listy), pistols, and many other items which they also confiscated.

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