The trial of eight people, including alleged leaders of the Czech ultra-right extremist scene, who are charged with support and promotion of movements to suppress human rights and freedoms started by reading the charges at a Prague district court Monday.
The court Monday also rejected the request of Patrik Vondrak, former chairman of the Prague branch of the dissolved extremist Workers' Party (DS), for his release form custody where he had spent almost one year.
According to state attorney Zdenka Galkova, the eight people assisted in pasting up stickers of the neo-Nazi National Resistance (NO) movement and in organising a demonstration in memory of fallen German Wehrmacht soldiers and SS members.
Former DS member Michaela Dupova is also charged with operating a website of the Resistance Women Unity (RWU), a women's branch of the NO, according to police, and helping organise a concert of "white power music."
Dupova is still in custody as well.
If found guilty, the accused extremists face up to eight years in prison since they committed crimes as members od an organised group in a very efficient way, Galkova said.
Police consider Vondrak one of the leading and most active representatives of the neo-Nazi NO. He was also a co-founder of the Young National Democrats civic association which tried to stage a march of ultra-right radicals through Prague' Jewish quarter on November 10, 2007, the anniversary of the Kristallnacht (Crystal Night) anti-Jewish pogrom in Nazi Germany in the night of November 10, 1938.
The other charged persons are Milan Hroch, former chairman of the DS regional organisation in Vysocina, Richard Lang, Filip Vavra, who invited former Grand Wizard of Ku-Klux-Klan David Duke to the Czech Republic, DS candidate in the 2008 EP elections Petr Fryc, Daniel Zavadil and Martin Vaclavek.
Hroch, Vavra and Lang are reportedly also connected with the NO.
Prague Monitor
