Tomio Okamura, known to the Czech
public as a more acceptable alternative to Tomáš Vandas, the chair of the
ultra-right Workers’ Social Justice Party (DSSS), has paid a visit to neo-Nazi
Vlastimil Pechanec at the prison in Pardubice where he is serving a 17-year
sentence for the murder of Otto Absolon, a Romani man. Okamura believes
Pechanec’s trial by three first-instance judges, three appeals court judges,
and three Supreme Court justices was manipulated and politicized.
Pechanec’s previous requests for
clemency have failed. Now Okamura, in his position as an MP and politician,
is striving to "depoliticize" this scandal by calling for a retrial
which he hopes might result in either a sentence reduction or an acquittal, as
well as in Pechanec’s release.
There is conjecture that when
Absolon was stabbed, two other people (also neo-Nazis) were in his physical
proximity whose descriptions might also match that of whoever perpetrated this
crime. Allegedly, one of those people is the nephew of the police officer who
secured the crime scene, while the other is the nephew of a former judge at the
Regional Court in Hradec Králové where Pechanec was eventually tried and
convicted.
Attorney Klára Samková is
apparently assisting this petition for a retrial. This former member of the TOP
09 party is now the leading EP candidate for Okamura’s Dawn of Direct Democracy
(Úsvit) party, best known for recently representing the perpetrators in the
so-called "machete scandal" and for her work with the Romani political
party Roma Civic Initiative (ROI) in the 1990s.
If Okamura and his team achieve a
retrial and the "clearing" of Pechanec’s name, it would be
unprecedented for the Czech Republic. It would reveal that the Czech Republic is
not really a democratic state governed by the rule of law and based on respect for
civil and human rights and freedoms, but that its real face is that of a state
based on clientelism, corruption, and human rights violations (such as that of a right to a fair trial), a state where laws and rights play a secondary, wild-card
role.
A successful retrial would prove
that in "sensitive" matters, the police, the state prosecutors and the
courts do not proceed impartially, but on the basis of what they believe is wanted by
politicians or the public. Another current example of this is the
"judicial mafia" scandal, which is revealing how politicized
courts "function" in the Czech Republic.
Such a precedent could make it
possible to reopen other "politicized" cases, such as those of Kajínek,
Patrik
from Krupka, the machete
attack in Nový Bor, or the case of the shooter in Tanvald,
which catapulted Lenka Bradáčová to the post of High State Prosecutor in
Prague. However, another question still hangs over all of this.
If Okamura succeeds, will the
police officers, the state attorneys and the nine judges who handled Pechanec’s
case also be pursued for their own criminal liability? What kind of a reputation
will the Czech justice system ultimately earn for itself?
Justice is supposed to be blind.
Our system does a bad job of interpreting what the point of that blindness even is.
