Prague - Among the latest batch of presidential pardons issued by Václav Klaus this week is one that could potentially harm relations between the Czech Republic and Thailand.
Emil Novotný, a convicted drug trafficker, is one of the seven Czechs who were given clemency by the head of state, which means the 32-year-old will not serve the remaining 16 years of his term, despite the guarantees previously given to the Thai authorities to this very effect.
Novotný was originally sentenced to 50 years in jail by a Thai court after he had been caught in March 1995 with over five kilos of heroin at the Bangkok international airport, apparently trying to smuggle the illicit drug to neighboring Cambodia.
He spent nine years behind bars in Thailand and saw his sentence commuted three times by the Thai king. In January 2004 the two countries reached a deal which allowed for him to be transferred to the Czech Republic under the condition that the length of the sentence given by the Thai court (and softened by the repeated royal amnesties) would be respected.
The court said no
As recently as last February, the Czech Constitutional Court gave a ruling which upheld the Thai verdict, rejecting Novotný´s allegations that his human rights were being violated by having to serve an unusually strict sentence.
The judges argued that Czech courts´ jurisdiction in Novotný´s case is distinctively limited and has to respect their Thai counterparts´ ruling as well as an international agreement between Thailand and the Czech Republic.
President Klaus took into account the fact that Novotný committed the crime as a very young man, his office said in a statement, together with the fact that he had spent a substantial part of his sentence in the Thai jail.
Radek Hanykovics, another young man who met a similar fate as Novotný in Thailand and was the subject of the same deal between the two countries, died last year of lung cancer. It was alleged that the conditions in the Thai jail severely undermined his health.
