Czech Constitutional Court rejects complaint from man responsible for desecrating memorial to the Holocaust and its Romani victims at Lety

The Czech Constitutional Court has rejected the complaint of Matouš Bulíř, one of a pair of perpetrators who placed signs insulting Romani people on the grounds of ​​the Holocaust memorial at Lety in the Písek district and who was then given a suspended sentence for the desecration. Bulíř has always denied his guilt and in the constitutional complaint he questioned the evidence, including, for example, visual recordings of the action. 

The judges rejected his complaint as manifestly unfounded, as the Czech News Agency discovered from an anonymized resolution in the court database. “The arguments contained in the constitutional complaint are, in essence, merely a repetition of the defense during the proceedings before the ordinary courts, which properly dealt with the complainant’s objections,” the resolution says.

“The Constitutional Court sees no rational reason why it should revise their conclusions,” reads the final judgment. In the years 1942 and 1943, Romani people in particular were forcibly imprisoned in the former concentration camp, some of whom died there, and many were eventually forcibly transported to extermination camps run by Nazi Germany. 

In 2018, the signs were placed on the information board at the memorial and on a tree, expressing the view that the monument is dedicated to “the last Roma who ever worked in the Czech Republic”. News server Romea.cz was the first media outlet to draw attention to the case. 

For the crime of denying and approving of genocide, the District Court in Písek sentenced Bulíř and his accomplice Pavel Kozák to 12 and eight months in prison respectively, suspended for two years. Upon appeal, the Tábor branch of the Regional Court reclassified the act as one of rioting and reduced the punishment, sending the men to seven and five months in prison, respectively, in both cases with a delay of 1.5 years. 

The Czech Supreme Court then rejected the convicts’ appeals. Bulíř also filed a constitutional complaint, the rejection of which ends his case in the domestic system.