Prague - Similar cases, different approach. Three cases of Czech high rank politicians suggest that the higher up you are in the Czech politics, the easier it is to escape charges or law suits.
Jiří Čunek, currently returning deputy Prime Minister, Liana Janáčková, a Moravian senator, as well as Pavel Severa, an MP, made it easily out of cases that haunt others for long months.
Racist remarks, leaking secret information and corruption - they have been suspected of similar misdeeds as their local colleagues but never made it to a law court, either to prove their innocence or to be proven guilty.
Czech officials or elected politicians stopped their cases on their way to the court house. Similar cases with local politicians are taking long months.
The case of Janáčková
Czech senator Liana Janáčková was saved by her colleague members from the upper chamber of Czech parliament when they refused to expose her to the police.
Janáčková was to be accused by the police of racism for her anti-Roma quotes that she uttered during her times as a mayor of one of Ostrava districts.
"Her story is not a story of skinheads who shout out their remarks somewhere. She said it under pressure while talking to the white majority. I can absolutely see the situation. She is a woman, a male mayor would never let others heat him up like this," said Jaroslav Kubera, one of her colleague senators.
The upper chamber meant that Janáčková did not say those things as a senator or on the parliament ground but at the time when she still was a mayor. Based on some parliamentarians, the parliament immunity should therefore not be applied in her case.
The majority though decided differently and saved Janáčková from investigations and prosecution.
"Shooting down all the Roma"
Her former colleague from Ostrava Jiří Jizerský was not that lucky. He was present at the meeting on situation in Ostrava district Bedřiška where Janáčková uttered her racist remarks. He did too, witnesses say he spoke about shooting down all of the Roma population.
"Give me a permission to own a shotgun and if you allow me to shoot them all I will go ahead and do it," Jizerský said supposedly.
The prosecution office in Ostrava already filed an action against him, the law court is to decide soon. But - his quote and the quotes of senator Janáčková were not that much different.
"I have to admit that I am a racist and I do not agree with integration and with spreading gypsies all across the district. I do not have a place to put Roma in, most likely I would have to get a dynamite and blast them all of," she said. Mr. Jizerský faces up to two years in prisons, she will continue to being a member of the Czech senate.
The case of Pavel Severa
Pavel Severa, Christian Democrats´ MP was behind leaking the report of Kubice that linked high politicians to the mafia. Police recognized his handwriting on the published copy and started his prosecution in 2006.
Based on the information of Aktuálně.cz, police wanted to accuse him already last summer and filed a request with parliament to give the politician over to the police.
But the prosecutor stepped in and forbade the request to be sent. After that, the prosecution filed multiple requests for additions to the record.
At the same time, investigators were certain that there was a plenty of evidence, the prosecution saw it differently, though.
It decided that Pavel Severa only committed an offense, and not a crime. Therefore he will not be judged by the court but by the National Security Office.
This same office decided last Thursday that Severa was really behind leaking the report to the media and he was sentenced to a fine of 25,000 CZK.
Secret documents on TV
In other cases though, the justice is much stricter, as in the case of Tomáš Smrček, a TV reporter who in 1999 showed on the TV screen a highly secret document. That paper monitored the off-stage of the security information service as well as the military intelligence service.
The reporter was accused of intentional exposure of secret information, the interests of the Czech Republic as well as the life of a military agent. The prosecution went on for 18 months after which the court ruled that Tomáš Smrček did break the law but the agent actually never existed.
The corruption affair of deputy prime minister Jiří Čunek is well-known among the Czech public and in some ways quite similar to the case of Severa.
Infamous Čunek case
Also Čunek was saved from being sued by the state prosecutor who stopped his case saying that the alleged deed never happened.
And while the deputy prime minister who was forced to step down and later returned to the government ignoring many protests is free of charge, three other people who were a part of the same affair will be brought to court for trying to manipulate the case on behalf of the deputy prime minister and former mayor.
One of the important witnesses of the deputy minister's defense and his former inferior Jaromír Kudlík faces charges for false testimony for proving Jiří Čunek's alibi.
Next month, another two people - businessmen Roman Vašků and Petr Šmírák will sit in court for influencing one of the witnesses.
