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
Sunday, 2 January 2011
Neo-Nazi leader may face more time in prison (USA)
As William A. White nears the end of his prison sentence, the neo-Nazi leader from Roanoke is facing the possibility of more time behind bars for his Internet aggressions.
A trial is scheduled to begin Monday in federal court in Chicago, where White is charged with using his website to encourage violence against the foreman of a jury that convicted a fellow white supremacist in 2004.
Slated to last all week, the trial comes just two weeks before White's expected release date.
Once described as one of the loudest voices in America's neo-Nazi movement, White has been serving a 2½-year sentence after his convictions in Roanoke of making threats against a bank employee in Missouri, a university administrator in Delaware and a group of apartment tenants in Virginia Beach.
The victims -- like the juror in the Chicago case -- were strangers to White and to one another, bound only by their innocent involvement in a news event or controversy that enraged the 33-year-old enough to make him bombard them with hateful e-mails, telephone calls, letters and blog posts. Most of White's outbursts were prompted by his contempt for blacks and Jews.
White argues that, even as an avowed racist, he is entitled to free speech protection.
It is a defense that has produced mixed results, depending on the individual details of each of the eight charges White has faced during his three-year battle with the federal government.
Convicted of three charges and cleared of four, White will face the final one Monday when jury selection begins in U.S. District Court in Chicago. If found guilty, he would face up to 10 years in prison.
The charge involves a Sept. 11, 2008, post that White made to Overthrow.com, a website he used to promote his white supremacy group, the now-defunct American National Socialist Workers Party, and disparage his perceived enemies.
White listed the name, address and telephone numbers of a juror who, he said, "played a key role in convicting Matt Hale," according to federal prosecutors. Hale, the former leader of the white supremacist World Church of the Creator, was convicted of soliciting the murder of a federal judge in Chicago and sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Although the post made no direct threats against the juror, prosecutors say it amounted to a solicitation of others to harm the man -- especially when taken in context with other Overthrow.com missives.
White would often list the names, home addresses and telephone numbers of his targets, along with language that prosecutors say was likely to influence his racist and potentially violent audience.
For example, when the case of six black youths charged with assaulting a white classmate led to a civil rights demonstration in Jena, La., White listed the defendants' addresses under the headline: "Lynch the Jena 6." White said he was making the information public "in case anyone wants to deliver justice."
Other posts expected to be presented as evidence this week include White's opinion that his ideological opponents "should be shot, rather than debated," and accounts of his self-described urge to "kill, kill, kill."
White's attorneys say that, despite his unpopular political views, there's nothing in his writings that explicitly encourages violence.
"This was not a solicitation, and it was protected by the First Amendment," attorney Nishay Sanan of Chicago said of the post about the juror in the Hale case. "That's the crux of our case."
Any mention of the First Amendment will be contested by federal prosecutors. In a motion filed last month, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Ferrara asked U.S. District Court Judge Lynn Adelman to prohibit White from invoking the First Amendment, saying he should not be allowed to testify as a lay witness on a legal matter.
"This court will instruct the jury on the appropriate legal standards for when a communication is a solicitation," Ferrara wrote. Because the right to free speech is not part of that standard, he argued, invoking the First Amendment would be "gratuitous and an appeal to emotion and sentiment."
Yet free speech has been a key part of the case from the start.
In July 2009, Adelman dismissed the charge against White, noting that he broke no laws in obtaining the publicly available address and telephone numbers of the juror. As for using passages from Overthrow.com to interpret.
Roanoke
A trial is scheduled to begin Monday in federal court in Chicago, where White is charged with using his website to encourage violence against the foreman of a jury that convicted a fellow white supremacist in 2004.
Slated to last all week, the trial comes just two weeks before White's expected release date.
Once described as one of the loudest voices in America's neo-Nazi movement, White has been serving a 2½-year sentence after his convictions in Roanoke of making threats against a bank employee in Missouri, a university administrator in Delaware and a group of apartment tenants in Virginia Beach.
The victims -- like the juror in the Chicago case -- were strangers to White and to one another, bound only by their innocent involvement in a news event or controversy that enraged the 33-year-old enough to make him bombard them with hateful e-mails, telephone calls, letters and blog posts. Most of White's outbursts were prompted by his contempt for blacks and Jews.
White argues that, even as an avowed racist, he is entitled to free speech protection.
It is a defense that has produced mixed results, depending on the individual details of each of the eight charges White has faced during his three-year battle with the federal government.
Convicted of three charges and cleared of four, White will face the final one Monday when jury selection begins in U.S. District Court in Chicago. If found guilty, he would face up to 10 years in prison.
The charge involves a Sept. 11, 2008, post that White made to Overthrow.com, a website he used to promote his white supremacy group, the now-defunct American National Socialist Workers Party, and disparage his perceived enemies.
White listed the name, address and telephone numbers of a juror who, he said, "played a key role in convicting Matt Hale," according to federal prosecutors. Hale, the former leader of the white supremacist World Church of the Creator, was convicted of soliciting the murder of a federal judge in Chicago and sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Although the post made no direct threats against the juror, prosecutors say it amounted to a solicitation of others to harm the man -- especially when taken in context with other Overthrow.com missives.
White would often list the names, home addresses and telephone numbers of his targets, along with language that prosecutors say was likely to influence his racist and potentially violent audience.
For example, when the case of six black youths charged with assaulting a white classmate led to a civil rights demonstration in Jena, La., White listed the defendants' addresses under the headline: "Lynch the Jena 6." White said he was making the information public "in case anyone wants to deliver justice."
Other posts expected to be presented as evidence this week include White's opinion that his ideological opponents "should be shot, rather than debated," and accounts of his self-described urge to "kill, kill, kill."
White's attorneys say that, despite his unpopular political views, there's nothing in his writings that explicitly encourages violence.
"This was not a solicitation, and it was protected by the First Amendment," attorney Nishay Sanan of Chicago said of the post about the juror in the Hale case. "That's the crux of our case."
Any mention of the First Amendment will be contested by federal prosecutors. In a motion filed last month, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Ferrara asked U.S. District Court Judge Lynn Adelman to prohibit White from invoking the First Amendment, saying he should not be allowed to testify as a lay witness on a legal matter.
"This court will instruct the jury on the appropriate legal standards for when a communication is a solicitation," Ferrara wrote. Because the right to free speech is not part of that standard, he argued, invoking the First Amendment would be "gratuitous and an appeal to emotion and sentiment."
Yet free speech has been a key part of the case from the start.
In July 2009, Adelman dismissed the charge against White, noting that he broke no laws in obtaining the publicly available address and telephone numbers of the juror. As for using passages from Overthrow.com to interpret.
Roanoke
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