Blovice, West Bohemia, Feb 9 (CTK) – Czech President Milos Zeman said on Tuesday he has recently pardoned a long-time ill person who committed a petty crime, as he put it, and added that this is the first pardon he has granted in his office.
Zeman said still before the 2013 presidential election he will not declare amnesties and will not grant pardons with the exception of strictly designated humanitarian cases.
He transferred the power to grant pardons to the Justice Ministry in November 2014.
Zeman’s spokesman Jiri Ovcacek told CTK that Zeman will release details of the case at a press conference at the end of his three-day visit to the Plzen Region in the afternoon on Wednesday.
Zeman’s post-communist predecessors, Vaclav Havel and Vaclav Klaus, granted almost 1700 pardons in the years 1993-2013. They were either the pardoning or changing of a punishment or the halting of criminal proceedings.
About three quarters of the pardons were granted during Havel’s two terms (1993-2003). He granted the biggest number of pardons in 1994 (407) and in 1994 (107).
Klaus granted 412 individual pardons during his two five-year terms (2003-13). He granted the biggest number of them (69) in 2009.
Havel also granted 601 pardons during his term as Czechoslovak president (1989-1992).
The last communist president Gustav Husak granted as many as 2018 pardons in 1988 alone, which was one year before the regime collapsed.
