The Prague 1 district court has decided to release after 14 months Patrik Vondra, former chairman of the Prague branch of the disbanded ultra-right Workers' Party (DS) and Michaela Dupova, a former DS member, from custody on a 400,000-crown bail, judge Libor Vavra told CTK yesterday. Besides, they promised not to be involved in any criminal activity and they will be under the supervision of a probation officer, Vavra said. Vondrak, Dupova and another six DS activists are charged with support and promotion of movements to suppress human rights and freedoms. Vondrak, 25, and Dupova, 21, spent about 14 months in custody, since the police raids at the end of October 2009. 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. The remaining six defendants were not in the custody.
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." 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. 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. All the defendants have pleaded not-guilty.
Prague Daily Monitor
