Prague, July 27 (CTK) – The Czech government approved on Wednesday an amendment to the Penal Code that would tighten punishment for terrorism support and introduce special crimes of the funding and promotion of terrorism, government spokesman Martin Ayrer has said on Twitter.
According to the amendment drafted by the Justice Ministry, perpetrators of a public approval of terrorism will face from three to 12 years in prison instead of the current maximum of one year behind bars.
At present, the Czech law punishes funding of terrorism within the crime of terrorist attack. The new amendment defines a separate crime of financial or any other support for terrorism for which 12 years in prison and property forfeiture can be imposed.
The Wednesday issue of daily Lidove noviny (LN) writes about the draft legislation.
It says the Czech anti-terrorist amendment reacts to requirements of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), fighting money laundering, and the Committee on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures and the Financing of Terrorism (MONEYVAL) international organisations. They say the Czech Republic is lagging behind the rest of Europe in the introduction of more efficient tools in the fight with terrorism, including its support, LN writes.
The Justice Ministry says the amendment should be approved as soon as possible. It wants the Chamber of Deputies to pass it in the first reading already.
The ministry points to the risk of the FATF calling on the 190 member and associated countries to assess the financial contacts of the Czech Republics as risky and take the respective measures.
No other European country has ever ended up in this regime, and it would probably lower the rating of the Czech Republic and restrict or even block international business transactions of Czech firms, the ministry warns.
LN writes that the FATF report from mid-2015 criticised the Czech Republic for not sufficiently dealing with funding of terrorism as the only EU and European country, LN says.
Under the draft amendment, the public approval of terrorism can be committed not just “among people”, but also in media and on social networks, such as Facebook, LN says.
“That is not only in the press, on radio and TV, but also on Facebook, for instance,” Lukas Bohuslav, from the penal law chair of the Faculty of Law of Charles University in Prague, told LN.
The amendment will newly introduce the crimes of threatening with terrorism and participation in a terrorist group.
Moreover, the legislation would define as crimes the giving or promising a reward to a terrorist or organising a fund-raising for such reward, along with providing a training for terrorists and travelling abroad with the aim to commit an act of terrorism as well as a robbery, theft or embezzlement committed with the aim to enable or facilitate a terrorist act, LN writes.
Not only the people who provide any financial and material aid, such as weapons and ammunition, for terrorists, but also those who promise them to look after their families and relatives after the attack will be punished, LN adds.
It says that such practices have become more and more frequent in Europe.
If Prague did not introduce these legislative changes quickly, it might lose trust of world banking institutions, foreign companies and investors and its rankings in the assessment by prestigious international agencies would decrease, which would have negative economic and political consequences, LN says, referring to Justice Minister Robert Pelikan (ANO).
However, security expert Andor Sandor expressed fears that the introduction of several new crimes in the Czech Penal Code would overwhelm the judiciary with an exorbitant number of complaints.
“It seems to me redundant, especially in the case of the approval of terrorist attacks on social networks. We will tighten the punishment to 12 years, but we will thereby not halt Islamic State,” Sandor told LN.
