Czech prosecutor charges young man from Moravia for hateful attacks against minorities online, he faces a high sentence if convicted
Detectives from the National Center for Combating Terrorism, Extremism and Cybercrime in the Czech Republic have completed their investigation of a young man who now faces prosecution for hatefully attacking minorities on social media. They have filed a motion to indict him and he is being prosecuted for five criminal offenses, Radek Bartoš, the Deputy Chief Public Prosecutor of Olomouc, told the Czech News Agency (ČTK) on 17 April.
Police apprehended the teenager in June 2024 and he has been in custody ever since. According to Bartoš, detectives submitted the investigation file with the motion to file an indictment to the Olomouc Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office in early April 2025.
“One of the decisions that the public prosecutor can make at the end of the preliminary proceedings is currently being processed. The decision can be expected to be processed within a few days,” Deputy Chief Public Prosecutor Bartoš told ČTK on 17 April.
Bartoš went on to say the accused remains in custody. The young man from Moravia allegedly established publicly accessible communication channels on the Internet in which he and others published audio-visuals, graphics, and images with the symbolism of Nazi Germany and material depicting attacks on members of minorities.
According to Bartoš, the accused attempted to create a group that would systematically focus on various forms of hateful attacks against members of ethnic, political, religious and sexual groups or minorities. The young man is also said to have incited such hateful attacks.
The accused is being prosecuted for promoting and supporting terrorism, as well as for founding, promoting and supporting a movement aimed at suppressing human rights and freedoms. The police also accuse him of obtaining chemicals to produce a pyrotechnic flash composition, which is an explosive.
The list of his charges was expanded last November to include illegal weapons possession and threatening to endanger others. The police accuse him of manufacturing weapons on a 3D printer, specifically, two short firearms.
The accused is also said to have threatened somebody with such a weapon. According to Czech media outlets Deník N and Voxpot, the young man was the co-founder of a group on the Telegram social network whose members radicalized each other.
The group had hundreds of members who were often minors. Czech media reports that the accused was arrested in association with preparations for a terrorist attack on the Duhový Pride [Rainbow Pride] march, the biggest LGBT+ community event in Slovakia.
According to prosecutors, however, the accused is not being prosecuted for the actual preparation of an attack on the Bratislava march because he voluntarily refrained from taking further action.
