Prague, Feb 6 (CTK) – The Prague police have proposed that far-right extra-parliamentary National Democracy (ND) party chairman Adam B. Bartos be charged with crimes against humanity for his speeches and books and other materials he published, police spokesman Tomas Hulan said yesterday.
Bartos faces the charges of denial, questioning, approval and justification of genocide, defamation of a nation, incitement to hatred and approval of crime, Hulan said.
If found guilty, he faces up to three years in prison.
The police filed the proposal to bring charges against him in the first half of January. According to the police, Bartos intentionally incited hatred of Jews as well as immigrants in his speeches and books he issued.
Bartos was accused last April.
He wrote on the ND’s website that the police had seized documents from him and searched his home and his party’s seat.
He called the police intervention “a political trial” with the aim to intimidate the ND and its followers.
Last October, Bartos was given a one-year suspended sentence for placing an anti-Semitic text at the grave of Anezka Hruzova, murdered in Polna, south Moravia, in 1899. The verdict has not taken effect yet.
Local Jew Leopold Hilsner was falsely found guilty of the murder of Hruzova, a 19-year-year Czech Christian woman, and sentenced to death, which was later commuted to life imprisonment. He was only pardoned in 1918.
The cause triggered a wave of anti-Semitism in the Czech Lands. It was challenged by Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, who later became the first Czechoslovak president (1918-35).
Bartos and ND member Zemanek displayed a sign with a photograph of the murdered woman and a text reading: “Her death cemented the Czech nation and it showed the urgent need to solve the Jewish question. The Jewish question has not been resolved in a satisfactory manner yet.” Both men signed the text.
The court decided not to punish Zemanek for the act.
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