The trial of four right-wing extremists suspected of the April 2009 arson attack on a Romany family house in Vitkov, north Moravia, started under tough security measures at the Regional Court in Ostrava yesterday. The four, David Vaculik, Jaromir Lukes, Ivo Mueller and Vaclav Cojocaru, face exceptional sentences, up to life imprisonment, if convicted of racially motivated attempted murder. They have been escorted to the courtroom by a strong unit of Prison Service officers. The state attorney says the crime, committed in the night to April 19, 2009, was planned by Lukes. This is also what Cojocaru and Mueller told the court. They said Lukes told them about the plan that was to frighten local Romanies in a pub in Opava, a town near Ostrava, on April 18. Lukes and Vaculik refused to give testimony. Lukes stayed in the car and each of the three young men threw a Molotov cocktail in the windows of a Romany family house in Vitkov. Then they drove away. Three of the house inhabitants suffered injuries in the subsequent fire. The worst afflicted was a 1.5-year-old girl, Natalka, who suffered severe burns on 80 percent of her body. Natalka stayed many months in hospital, undergoing a series of surgeries. Doctors call her survival a miracle. She will bear lifelong consequences of her injuries, however. Cojocaru and Mueller claim they did not know that the house they attacked was inhabited. Muller said Lukes told them it was a place where stolen goods were stored.
Both Cojocaru and Mueller said they heard the news about the burnt girl only in the morning after their attack. They read it on the Internet, they said. "We really felt sorry for the little girl... We didn't realise that something like this might happen," Mueller told the judges. The four wanted to draw attention within local extremist groups. They also wanted to take a "bigger action" on the eve of Adolf Hitler's 120th birth anniversary, the attorney said. Cojocaru and Mueller rejected this. "I was spontaneous. I don't believe that anybody prepared it. At least not with me," Cojocaru said. Lukes's lawyer Pavel Penkava said he disagreed with the statements that Lukes masterminded the attack. "We will try to refute this claim during the trial," he said. Pavel Uhl, the representative of the children who were in the house when the attack occurred, told CTK yesterday that he would demand financial compensation worth some nine millions of crowns. Markus Pape and Ladislav Balaz demand compensation of 900,000 crowns on behalf of Natalka's family. The VZP health insurance company demands the payment of 7.5 million crowns for the treatment of Natalka and her parents. The trial is to continue on Wednesday at 9:00.
Prague Monitor
