Ostrava - More than 20 years in prison for a racially-motivated arson attack against a Roma family. That is the sentence passed by a court in Ostrava, the Czech Republic, on four young men charged with the crime.
The prosecution managed to convince the judges that in the night between 18 and 19 April 2009, three of the men hurled three molotov cocktails at a house inhabited by a Roma family of nine in Vítkov neighborhood in the Ostrava Region, while the fourth was waiting for them in the car they arrived in.
Read more: Police charge four people with Vítkov arson attack
Three people were injured in the attack, with the gravest injuries suffered by Natalie, a girl who had less than two years at the time. Natálie suffered from burn injuries covering 80 percent of her body.
Read more: Romani girl slowly recovering from arson burns
The state prosecutor wanted the three men that threw the explosives to be given exceptional sentences for a racially motivated attempted murder. The defendants' lawyers asked for lighter sentences. In case of David Vaculík, one of the attackers, they wanted him to be freed of charges.
The court in Ostrava passed exceptional sentences: three of the men were sentenced to 22 years in prison, one to to 20 years.
All the defendants have already appealed against the sentence, the case will thus go to the High Court in Olomouc.
Police wiretaps showed that the arsonist drew their inspiration from a wave of similar attacks against Roma people in Hungary in 2008 and 2009.
