Prague, Aug 26 (CTK) – The court has acquitted Jana Necasova, who headed then Czech PM Petr Necas’s office in the early 2010s and whom he later married, of abuse of military intelligence (VZ) based on the testimony of Necas and VZ officers who dismissed the VZ having spied on then Necas’s wife Radka, daily Pravo writes.
People could hear neither Necas’s nor the suspects’ testimony at Prague 1 District Court because the judge, Helena Kralova, ordered that the proceedings be closed to the public.
Pravo writes it has the judge’s explanation of the verdict at its disposal.
Kralova did not explain her verdict when she acquitted Necasova (formerly Nagyova) and three former VZ officers in May, which caused embarrassment among commentators and the public.
In 2013, Nagyova was charged with unlawful tasking the VZ with spying on Radka Necasova for personal reasons in 2012.
The suspicion, along with other problems, toppled Necas’s centre-right cabinet in June 2013. Necas, who divorced his wife in the meantime, married Nagyova later in the same year.
The text of the verdict show that Kralova trusted the assertion of Nagyova’s defence lawyer and mainly of Necas (Civic Democrats, ODS), who said he feared for his life and the life of his family, which is why he asked the then VZ director Ondrej Palenik for help in October 2012, Pravo writes.
Afterwards, the VZ officers did not shadow Radka Necasova but they protected her against possible shadowing, according to Necas’s testimony, which judge Kralova trusted.
In the verdict, she wrote that Necas’s testimony had been confirmed by the testimonies of suspects from among all questioned officers, including former VZ head Ondrej Palenik, his successor Milan Kovanda and agent Jan Pohunek, as well as previous VZ chief Rostislav Pilc, who testified as a witness in the case.
All pieces of evidence resulted in Kralova’s widely-known verdict saying that the challenged steps by Nagyova and the above VZ officers were no crime, Pravo writes.
“After assessing the evidence, the court came to the conclusion that the pieces of evidence did not refute the suspects’ defence arguments but, on the contrary, they confirmed them,” Kralova stated.
While the state attorneys believed that Nagyova had Radka Necasova shadowed in order to separate Necas from his family and force him to divorce his wife in order to win him over, Kralova is of quite a different view.
Kralova refers to Necas’s testimony that at the time of the VZ’s alleged shadowing of Radka Necasova, he considered his marriage terminated. As early as mid-2011, he and Radka agreed on further steps [towards divorcing each other], and he moved away from Radka in November 2012, Necas testified, cited by Kralova.
Jana Necasova, too, dismissed any personal aims such as an effort to win Necas for herself. She even said her intimate relationship with Necas had lasted nine years then, probably since 2003, when she worked as a aide of ODS senator Vladimir Kulhanek, Kralova writes.
She writes that the argument that Necas’s family was threatened was clearly true, as Necas, in his testimony, said he feared for his family because he noticed unusual turmoil of persons in the surroundings of their home in summer 2012 and he noticed these people there repeatedly.
That is why he addressed Palenik as then VZ head and assigned Nagyova to mediate the transfer of the necessary information. He asked for the VZ activities in this respect to remain secret, out of fear that his wife would cause uproar or share the information with her friends if she learnt about being protected by the military service, Necas said, cited by Kralova.
She dismissed the state attorney’s argument that reports on “shadowing” were uncovered by the police during home searches and that the investigation did not confirm any danger that would have threatened Necas’s family.
Kralova’s verdict has not taken effect and can still be appealed by the state attorneys and the suspects, Pravo adds.
