The public prosecutor is demanding a suspended sentence for Vítězslav Kroupa, who is accused due to hateful comments on Facebook under a photo of Teplice’s freshmen. The lawyer asks for acquittal, according to him that the act is not a criminal offense and it has not been proven that Kroupa is the owner of the profile on which the comments appeared. The court will rule on Thursday.
Mostly Roma, Vietnamese and Arab children attended the class at Plynárenská Elementary School. The photo was published by the regional daily. Under the photo on Facebook, a discussion developed, which the accused man commented with sentences in which, according to the indictment, he came across the murder of Jews during the Second World War in gas chambers. It was stated on Facebook: “Also, they are from Plynárenská Elementary School. The solution is directly offered. Don’t say that you didn’t think of it !!!” According to the indictment, he wrote this commentary due to the ethnic groups of some of the depicted children.
Judge Lucie Yakut said in an original acquittal last April that it had not been proven that the act had been committed by the defendant. According to her, it has not been proven that the Facebook profile marked “vita kroupa”, from which a commentary and a photograph of Adolf Hitler or the imperial eagle holding a swastika in its clutches was published, belongs to the accused.
The Regional Court of Appeal returned the case and ordered that the evidence be supplemented. The Teplice court heard several witnesses, two women by video conference on Monday. According to public prosecutor Ondřej Langr, it is proven that the acts were committed by the defendant, the profile name is similar to the name of the defendant, the comment was written from Denmark at the time Kroupa was in Denmark.
Plaintiff: Freedom of speech has boundaries where the rights of others are suppressed
The public prosecutor proposed a suspended sentence of two years with a deferral of three to four years. According to him, this comment is a criminal offense. “This is already over the edge. There is clearly a call for liquidation, it is no longer right and such actions need to be prosecuted,” he said.
“It is necessary to realize that the meeting has some context. The first act was the publication of defective photographs of Adolf Hitler and the like, and there were comments,” said Langr. According to him, freedom of speech reaches its limits if the rights of others are suppressed. In addition, according to him, the attack was aimed at small children.
Attorney Michael Mann defended freedom of speech in his closing speech. He insists that the act described is not a criminal offense. “No matter who wrote it, he wrote it as a pun, with no intention of inciting anyone. Punishing humor is a sign of all totalitarianism,” he said. He therefore proposed that the client be released.
