Roma ex-police officer to be re-imprisoned in Czech Republic
Martin Barkóci, a former police officer from the town of Ostrov nad Ohří, must return to prison by next Thursday at the latest. News server Novinky.cz reports that the Regional Court in Plzeň called on Barkóci this week to complete the remainder of a sentence that was suspended last year by former Czech Justice Minister Daniela Kovářová.
According to the news server, Barkóci’s appeal to the Czech Supreme Court was not successful, nor was the effort by Kovářová, who filed a complaint regarding legal violations in the case on his behalf. The former minister made use of the power of her office to suspend the former police officer’s sentence until the Supreme Court verdict was reached. Last November the court decided that the original verdict, which sentenced Barkóci to three years in prison for covering up a crime, stands. He must now serve another two years and nine months.
Barkóci was charged with abusing his role as a police officer in order to cover up violence committed by two other Roma men against a non-Roma man who later turned out to be an informant of the Organized Crime Detection Unit. Barkóci has always maintained his innocence. The Regional Court in Plzeň first sentenced him to four years in prison, but the High Court in Prague subsequently reduced the sentence to three years and also struck down the part of the verdict that said he had been racially motivated.
The case occurred in December 2007 in the town of Ostrov in the Karlovy Vary region. The two Roma men, Milan Pačan and Julius Horváth, were charged with attacking a 35-year-old non-Roma man and allegedly struck him with the handle of a shovel several times in the face and chest. The victim claimed the perpetrators shouted racist insults at him during the attack.
Barkóci, who arrived on the scene as a police officer, allegedly said to the victim: “They should have killed you here. Be careful what you testify.” According to the prosecution, the victim’s fear of testifying delayed the police investigation by several months. Barkóci also allegedly did his best to influence the victim during his interrogation.
Pačan was given a three-year sentence by the appeals court, which sent Horváth to prison for two and a half years. The court convicted them of attempted grievous bodily harm and rioting. They were said to have caused the victim serious injury. Barkóci was sent behind bars for abusing the powers of a public official and for extortion. He started his prison sentence in October 2009. In the towns of Karlovy Vary and Ostrov, where the former police officer comes from, people signed petitions protesting his conviction.
The November 2010 decision to send Martin Barkóci back to prison surprised Karlovy Vary city council member Jiří Kotek: “I have had the opportunity to get to know Mr Barkóci and his family rather well since his arrest. He is a decent and dutiful young man.” According to news server Alternativa08.cz, Kotek believes Martin Barkóci did not receive a fair trial. “I am familiar with the case file in great detail and with the material on the evidence. The court convicted him of something which is simply not in those documents. I do not want to speculate about the Supreme Court decision, because I do not know what their argument was. In any event, the media presentation has left me with a feeling of great bitterness about the functioning of fairness in the justice system. We did not see a fair trial here,” Kotek told them.
Martin Barkóci, 3 November 2010:
“Hello, today I found out from the media and the news that my request to the Supreme Court in Brno and everything associated with my case was rejected for some incomprehensible reason…. Those in my neighborhood and people in the entire town are appalled by this decision!!! What is interesting is that neither I nor my attorney knew of this until we read it in the newspaper and online. Once again, that same journalist is writing about my case who shook the hand of the state prosecutor so strongly prior to my hearing at the Regional Court in Plzeň. Once again, he has published lies and rumors that only serve to incriminate Horváth and Pacan!!! He has written that I myself called them and helped them cover up their criminal activity, which is not true!!!! Everything about this case is backwards. I was released from prison because the Justice Ministry showed there had been procedural errors and demanded my acquittal, but that did not happen. I’m to be a jailbird once more….”
Source: http://www.sinagl.cz
