Criminal investigators from the extremism and terrorism department of the Prague police have asked the Chamber of Deputies to extradite the leader of the SPD opposition movement, Tomio Okamura, for criminal prosecution.
They suspect him of inciting hatred towards a group of people or restricting their rights and freedoms in connection with last year’s billboard campaign. Police spokesman Jan Daněk informed ČTK about the request sent by criminal investigators to the lower chamber this morning. Okamura wants to comment on the matter in the afternoon.
Requests to extradite MPs for prosecution go to the secretariat of the Speaker of the Lower House and from there to the Mandate and Immunity Committee. The speaker of the Speaker of the House Markéta Pekarová Adamová (TOP 09) told ČTK that the request for Okamur’s extradition for prosecution arrived by mailbox before 11:30 a.m. and will be forwarded to the relevant committee.
Controversy was caused by SPD billboards before the regional elections. On only one of them was a dark-skinned man with a blood-stained knife and a blood-stained shirt along with the text “Deficiencies in the health care sector will not be solved by imported ‘surgeons'”. Critics described the ad as racist, according to them it just unnecessarily scared the public. Criminal charges were filed. Okamura tagged the campaign on the X network as allegorical, according to him, it was reacting to the government’s actions, due to which migrants will flow to the Czech Republic. He referred to the approval of the migration pact of the European Union. Police announced in mid-August that they had opened criminal proceedings over the poster, for possible incitement to hatred against a group of people.
The filing of further criminal complaints was also triggered by an SPD election poster on which two Roma boys were smoking cigarettes. The image was created by artificial intelligence. The text read: “They say let us go to school, but ours are on the hook…” and “Support only for families whose children are attending school!”.
The SPD election campaign was also dealt with by the courts. The lawyer Pavla Krejčí and other people she represented demanded from the courts in various regions that they protect the honesty of the campaign and prohibit the use of the poster with the text “Deficiencies in the health care industry will not be solved by imported surgeons”. They also pointed to a poster with a picture of two Roma boys with cigarettes. The regional courts did not comply with the proposals. Even the Constitutional Court (ÚS) did not intervene, it did not find a procedural way to do so. According to the ÚS, critics of the SPD campaign should still have turned to the Supreme Administrative Court.
Source: zpravy.tiscali.cz
