Prague, 21 July 2023. Despite media headlines following the death of former Minister of interior Vratislav Vajnar (1930 – 2023), the prosecution of perpetrators from the Iron Curtain in former Czechoslovakia is continuing. On 30 June, the Czech Office for the Documentation and Investigation of the Crimes of Communism charged the next in the chain of command – Jan Muzikář, former first deputy chief of the Main administration of the Border guard and the State border protection. The accused is 89 years old this year. The Platform for European Memory and Conscience (PEMC) points out that a few hundred more people were named in its criminal complaints from 2016 and 2017, and warns against further unacceptable delays in criminal prosecution, as was the case with former Prime minister Štrougal and former minister Vajnar.

After the opening of the main trial against former Minister of interior Vratislav Vajnar in the case of killing and injuring civilians on the borders of the former Czechoslovakia on 25 April 2023 at the District Court for Prague 1, during which the indictment was read out and the evidence was presented, media reported on 20 June 2023 that the defendant had died. The public may have mistakenly understood that this was the end of the prosecution of the perpetrators of these imprescriptible totalitarian crimes. However, this is not the case. The PEMC welcomes the fact that on 30 June 2023, the Office for the Documentation and Investigation of Crimes against Communism initiated criminal prosecution by charging another in a long line of up to three hundred individuals who, according to the Platform’s research and subsequent criminal complaints from 2016 in Germany and 2017 in the Czech Republic, were involved in the killing of specific refugees. The person in question is Colonel Jan Muzikář (*1934), former Chief of staff and First deputy chief of the Main administration of the Border guard and the State border protection. He is being blamed for the death of František Faktor (+1984), Hartmut Tautz (+ 1986), Johann Dick (+1986) and Wolfgang Günter Hoffmann (+1986) as well as for injury to the health of at least the following persons, former citizens of the GDR: Siegfried Karl Fröbel, Jürgen Seifert, Uwe Lenzendorf, Kerstin Trautwein, Ulrich Trautwein, Dr. Thomas Bartsch, Günther Herbert Zeh, Rene Röder and Steffen Schlegel.

“This year marks seven years since the filing of our criminal complaint in Germany and six years since our subsequent criminal complaint to the Supreme state prosecutor in Brno. We are glad that the wheels of Czech justice are rolling, albeit slowly and reluctantly, but that they are rolling. I hope that they will not stop, but actually speed up the process,” says Dr. Neela Winkelmann, former Managing Director of the PEMC and manager of the JUSTICE 2.0 project, adding: “I believe that we will no longer see delays on the part of the police investigation authorities, such as medical attestations ordered from biased experts, as was the case with the accused Štrougal and Vajnar, where the Constitutional Court had to intervene. These delays were the reason why Mr Vajnar eventually did not live to hear a verdict in his case.”