Prague, 21 July – Relatives of victims of the Iron Curtain on the borders of communist Czechoslovakia were yesterday served with new expert reports on the health of former Prime Minister Lubomír Štrougal (born 1924) and former Federal Minister of the Interior Vratislav Vajnar (born 1930), both of whom are accused of being complicit in the deaths and injuries of people trying to leave Czechoslovakia at the Czechoslovak border before 1989.
The ongoing prosecution of Lubomír Štrougal, Vratislav Vajnar and others for the killing of refugees on the state borders of the Czechoslovakia is based on criminal complaints filed by the Platform of European Memory and Conscience in Germany in 2016 and in the Czech Republic in 2017.
New expert reports had to be prepared because the Czech Constitutional Court in December 2021 pointed out the fundamental flaws of the previous ones. The Platform of European Memory and Conscience pointed out that the original expert witnesses had been closely associated with the previous regime, and were in fact ideologically subordinate to those being assessed. They could therefore be considered biased. The Constitutional Court, before which the case was brought, argued the same.
After delays, the forensic experts finally completed and reviewed the current health status of both former communist potentates. According to the assessment, former Prime Minister Strougal is afflicted with mild dementia and is unable to understand the content and meaning of the procedural acts in criminal proceedings because of it. Former Interior Minister Vajnar suffers from mild cognitive impairment but is able to understand the meaning of the acts of criminal proceedings. However, it is necessary to explain everything slowly and clearly in the eventual proceedings, not to rush him and not to burden him with long performances.
According the reports, Štrougal will probably escape a fair trial, while Vajnar could stand trial. Together with Jan Fojtík, former ideological secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and František Kincl (born 1941), former Federal Minister of the Interior of Czechoslovkia.
The Czechoslovak legal system guaranteed that “everyone” had the right to “freely leave any country, even his own”. But the border regime, for which the accused were co-accused, prevented the free movement of persons, even at the cost of the use of firearms or specially trained dogs.
Mr Vladimír Hackl, the prosecutor of the Prague City Prosecutor’s Office, must now decide how to proceed.