Neo-Nazis guilty of race crime
Source: Agencies |
October 21, 2010, Thursday
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A COURT in the Czech Republic has convicted four right-wing extremists of an arson attack on a Roma family that injured a two-year-old girl, and sentenced them yesterday to stiff prison terms.
The four were charged with racially motivated attempted murder for a molotov cocktail attack in April last year on the home of a family of Roma, or gypsies. The attack was allegedly timed to coincide with the 120th anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birthday.
David Vaculik, Jaromir Lukes, Ivo Mueller and °?Vaclav Cojocaru pleaded not guilty. They said that they didn't know the house in the northeastern town of Vitkov was inhabited.
The trial proved that their intention was to kill the Roma who lived in the house "because of their race," Judge Misoslav Studnicka ruled.
The court in the city of Ostrava, 360 kilometers east of the capital Prague, sentenced Vaculik, Lukes and Mueller to 22 years in prison each, and Cojocaru to 20 years.
Beside life imprisonment, a maximum prison term in the Czech Republic is 25 years. All four appealed the verdict.
The two-year-old girl, Natalie, suffered severe burns to 80 percent of her body and was in serious condition for months. Her parents were also hospitalized.
Natalie was battling for her life for months and doctors operated on her 14 times. She still has to be hospitalized on a short-term basis and undergoes rehabilitation, but it is not clear if she will ever fully recover from her injuries.
Studnicka said there were three more children and two adults in the house at the time of the attack and it was pure luck that nobody was killed.
State prosecutor Brigita Bilikova has said that three of the men threw Molotov cocktails into the house "to minimize the chance that inhabitants would survive."
Studnicka said the four intended the attack to mark the 120th anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birthday and to make their activities more visible within the neo-Nazi movement. Materials seized during home search in their homes "proved their extremist ... neo-Nazi orientation," he said
"I will never be able to forgive them," Natalie's mother, Anna Sivakova, told Czech television yesterday.
The court also ordered the four to pay damages to the tune of 9.4 million koruna (US$531,000) to Natalie, 72,000 koruna to her parents and 7.5 million koruna to a health insurance company.
Following the arson attack, the government stepped up its efforts to fight right-wing extremism.
In February, the country's Supreme Administrative Court banned the extremist far-right Workers Party because of its links to neo-Nazis, in the first such verdict since 1989.
Human rights groups says that the Czech Republic discriminates against the country's 250,000 Romas, who suffer from high unemployment rates within their community and are often targeted by far-right groups.
The four were charged with racially motivated attempted murder for a molotov cocktail attack in April last year on the home of a family of Roma, or gypsies. The attack was allegedly timed to coincide with the 120th anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birthday.
David Vaculik, Jaromir Lukes, Ivo Mueller and °?Vaclav Cojocaru pleaded not guilty. They said that they didn't know the house in the northeastern town of Vitkov was inhabited.
The trial proved that their intention was to kill the Roma who lived in the house "because of their race," Judge Misoslav Studnicka ruled.
The court in the city of Ostrava, 360 kilometers east of the capital Prague, sentenced Vaculik, Lukes and Mueller to 22 years in prison each, and Cojocaru to 20 years.
Beside life imprisonment, a maximum prison term in the Czech Republic is 25 years. All four appealed the verdict.
The two-year-old girl, Natalie, suffered severe burns to 80 percent of her body and was in serious condition for months. Her parents were also hospitalized.
Natalie was battling for her life for months and doctors operated on her 14 times. She still has to be hospitalized on a short-term basis and undergoes rehabilitation, but it is not clear if she will ever fully recover from her injuries.
Studnicka said there were three more children and two adults in the house at the time of the attack and it was pure luck that nobody was killed.
State prosecutor Brigita Bilikova has said that three of the men threw Molotov cocktails into the house "to minimize the chance that inhabitants would survive."
Studnicka said the four intended the attack to mark the 120th anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birthday and to make their activities more visible within the neo-Nazi movement. Materials seized during home search in their homes "proved their extremist ... neo-Nazi orientation," he said
"I will never be able to forgive them," Natalie's mother, Anna Sivakova, told Czech television yesterday.
The court also ordered the four to pay damages to the tune of 9.4 million koruna (US$531,000) to Natalie, 72,000 koruna to her parents and 7.5 million koruna to a health insurance company.
Following the arson attack, the government stepped up its efforts to fight right-wing extremism.
In February, the country's Supreme Administrative Court banned the extremist far-right Workers Party because of its links to neo-Nazis, in the first such verdict since 1989.
Human rights groups says that the Czech Republic discriminates against the country's 250,000 Romas, who suffer from high unemployment rates within their community and are often targeted by far-right groups.
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