Top attorney to know number of halted proceedings in Feb

Brno, Jan 23 (CTK) - The Czech Supreme State Attorney's Office (NSZ) will probably know a more exact number of the criminal proceedings halted based on the latest presidential amnesty in the latter half of February, Supreme Attorney Pavel Zeman said Wednesday, adding that the number is estimated at 100 to 150.

These proceedings include about twenty big cases that have been handled by the high state attorney's offices, Zeman told journalists.

He said he has a special report worked out to sum up the proceedings halted by the amnesty that President Vaclav Klaus declared on January 1.

Apart from scrapping the lowest prison and suspended sentences, the amnesty also halts the cases of criminal prosecution if they have lasted for more than eight years and the suspects do not face more than ten years in jail.

Critics say this provision pardons large-scale thieves and fraudsters, which they call outrageous and unacceptable.

Zeman said the report is to be completed by February 15, but the number of cases in it still will not be final, because many proceedings will continue based on state attorneys' complaints against their halting and pending the final decision on them.

Zeman said he learnt about the amnesty only from Klaus's New Year's Day speech.

According to Zeman's information, no one enquired in advance into how many cases the amnesty would apply to.

He said state attorneys "were far from delighted" at the prospect of some protracted cases being halted.

"Big efforts have been spent on handling the cases. The fact that the proceedings lasted so long does not necessarily mean that there were delays on our [state attorneys'] part," Zeman said, pointing to the cases' complex character, Zeman said.

He said the respective attorneys would lodge complaints against the halting of proceedings only in the cases in which, in their opinion, the conditions of the amnesty would not be met.

Reasons for this differ in individual cases, Zeman said. He would not indicate state attorneys' strategy or concrete arguments in this respect.

Zeman said he considers it good that the amnesty might be checked by the Constitutional Court (US), which has obtained several proposals for the abolition of the amnesty or its parts.

"The Constitutional Court will put the aggrieved parties' rights on one side of the scale and the president's right [to declare amnesty] ensuing from the constitution on the other," Zeman said.

He said the verdict cannot be anticipated. There is no precedent of a similar case from the past. Some even doubt whether the US is empowered to check the amnesty, Zeman said.

If the US scrapped the amnesty's most controversial article, i.e. the one halting criminal proceedings, it probably would not reverse the cases that would have been halted by then.

The US verdict would only affect the proceedings that would not have been definitively halted, Zeman said.