Justice minister blames judges for wiretapping scandal

Prague, June 30 (CTK) - Eight judges of the district court in Decin, north Bohemia, made mistakes when granting the permit to monitor the phone calls of influential people, Czech Justice Minister Jiri Pospisil told journalists yesterday.

They failed to explain sufficiently why they complied with the applications for listings of the phone numbers, Pospisil said, adding that the office would probably propose disciplinary proceedings against them.

The Justice Ministry checked the monitoring permits over a recent scandal with police officer Marian Hudec who fraudulently gained phone calls recordings of head of President Vaclav Klaus's office Jiri Weigl, Klaus's secretary Ladislav Jakl, Constitutional Court chairman Pavel Rychetsky and some other people, including influential judges, officials, journalists and lobbyists.

Klaus said similar practices were proof of "an unhealthy and unfortunate" society.

The violation of law was uncovered by the Interior Ministry inspection in a comprehensive probe. According to a version, the police officer worked on order.

A police officer can only obtain the listing with a court permit.

Hudec gained the sensitive data by calling the phone numbers of the influential people suspicious. He had the monitoring approved within the investigation of people trafficking with the involvement of fraudsters from Cameroon and Nigeria.

"The judges did not always observe the rules of criminal procedures," Pospisil said.

He said they had agreed with the wiretapping, although Hudec had not explained the relation of the numbers to the case in question.

The office checked 18 permits of listing that related to roughly 50 numbers. All the applications were lodged by Hudec and all looked about the same, Pospisil said.

The ministry is preparing further checks with the use of randomly chosen numbers. It is also planning an amendment to the criminal procedures toughening the rules for the granting of permits to monitor phone numbers, Pospisil said.

pv/dr/ms