Yet another arsonist who committed the 2009 attack on a Romani family in Vítkov, Czech Republic, seeks early release

Lucie Blahutová, spokesperson for the District Court in Karviná, has confirmed the request to the Czech News Agency (ČTK). Lukeš is serving his sentence in Karviná, so the court there will review his request on 28 May.

Of the four men convicted of committing the arson against the Romani family, two were released early last year. Lukeš and David Vaculík remain behind bars.

“I can confirm that this convict has filed a request for conditional release. The court will review it on 28 May. The hearing will be open to the public,” said Blahutová.

The court spokesperson added that the management of the prison has expressed its agreement with the request. The four neo-Nazis attacked house no. 58 on the outskirts of Vítkov in the Opava area during the late night hours of 18 April and the early morning hours of 19 April 2009.

Three masked perpetrators threw one Molotov cocktail each through the ground-floor windows of the house. An accomplice was waiting nearby in a car and they all then fled the scene.

The powerful blaze started by the perpetrators almost cost a baby girl who was not yet two years old her life and injured her father and mother. There were eight people in the house at the time.

Little Natálka suffered burns over almost 80 % of her body and her injuries were the most severe. She was transported to hospital in critical condition and was not released until eight months later.

The girl lost three fingers and has other health repercussions that will last the rest of her life, as she has to repeatedly undergo operations. Her mother, Anna Siváková, and her mother’s partner, Pavel Kudrik, made it out of the burning house with injuries that were less severe.

Last May the District Court in Šumperk conditionally released two of the convicted perpetrators of the arson attack, Václav Cojocaru and Ivo Müller, who had served two-thirds of their sentences, i.e., 12 years, for multiple counts of racially-motivated attempted murder. The prosecutor agreed with both requests.

According to their attorneys, both Cojocaru and Müller have been working while in prison. The court put them on supervised probation for seven years.

The convicts still have to make regular payments to compensate the health insurer and the family for the damages incurred. Siváková was shocked by the decision of the Šumperk court to release them last year, which was very closely followed by the public.

Long sentences were handed down by the courts for the racist arson attack in Vítkov

Police managed to track down and apprehend the perpetrators of the racially motivated crime in four months. Detectives were led to the assailants by a volunteer firefighter from the Opava area who had happened to overhear an acquaintance telephoning with one of the perpetrators.

When the firefighter learned about the tragedy in Vítkov from the media, he reported the suspicious phone call to the police. Detectives arrested 12 extremists in connection with the case in August 2009.

Four of those suspects were ultimately charged with racially-motivated attempted murder. The trial began in May 2010 in Ostrava.

The defendants were Václav Cojocaru, Jaromír Lukeš, Ivo Müller and David Vaculík. According to experts on extremism, all four young men were active neo-Nazis, which was proven by items found during searches of their homes.

Vaculík repeatedly attended the trial wearing clothing of the Thor Steinar brand, which is a favorite of neo-Nazis. The defendants argued that they had had no idea the single-family home was occupied.

Allegedly the defendants had believed the building was being used as a warehouse for stolen property. Their attorneys asked the court to assess their crime as one of battery or reckless endangerment, not attempted murder.

One attorney for the defense even indirectly accused Natálka’s parents of being complicit in her serious injuries, alleging that they had taken too long to retrieve her from the burning room. The first-instance verdict in the case was handed down on 20 October 2010.

“We have come to the opinion that the defendants knew the house was occupied,” the judge said. The court called their actions a brutal attack and compared it to Kristallnacht, when the Nazis burned down synagogues and other Jewish targets in Germany in November 1938.

According to the verdict, the men planned the attack as a substitute for the fact that they could not afford to attend a demonstration with their fellow neo-Nazis in Bohemia at that same time. Lukeš, Müller and Vaculík were sentenced to 22 years in prison.

Those three defendants had all previously been convicted of either perpetrating violence or promoting Nazism. The fourth convict, Cojocaru, was given a 20-year sentence.

In Cojocaru’s case, the court took into consideration the fact that he had no prior criminal record, had not contributed to organizing the attack, and had joined the others at the last minute. All convicts appealed.

The case was then heard by the High Court in Olomouc, which reduced Müller’s sentence to 20 years in the spring of 2011. The court took into consideration the fact that he had confessed and expressed regret.

The High Court upheld the sentences of the other three convicts, as did the Supreme Court. In 2014, the Constitutional Court rejected a complaint filed by Lukeš and Vaculík, saying there was nothing about their cases that was unconstitutional and that the justice system had proceeded and ruled correctly.

The convicts also have to pay several million crowns in compensation. Anna Siváková told the daily Právo in January 2023 that Cojocaru and Müller have been sending her about CZK 3000 [EUR 120] per month, Lukeš sends between CZK 150 and 200 [EUR 6 – 8] per month, and the only convict who has not sent her anything yet is Vaculík.

Another component of the verdict is the convicts’ obligation to pay the health insurer CZK 7.5 million [EUR 300,000] for the treatment of Natálka’s burns. “I can confirm that the damages we calculated have been paid regularly,” Ivo Čelechovský, spokesperson for the RBP health insurance company, told news server Novinky.cz in January 2023.