ECHR looks at Horáková execution case

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has given the Czech government until mid-January to file a statement on a Czech woman's appeal against her conviction for judicial murder in a case that spans 60 years.

Ludmila Brožová-Polednová, now 88, is the only surviving participant of the 1950 trial, which is considered one of the most notorious show trials of the communist era.

She is currently serving six years in prison after being convicted in 2008 over her role in the case that led to the hanging of Milada Horáková, a Czech democratic campaigner who is today considered a national hero.

Commissioner Vít Alexander Schorm, the Czech Republic's representative to the ECHR, told The Prague Post that Brožová-Polednová's European case was based on "the issue of culpability for the punished behavior by the claimant at the time of the Horáková trial, as well as the justness of criminal procedure against her."

Schorm said the request meant the case had passed the court's initial stage of acceptability during which around 90 percent of complaints are thrown out.

"For further evaluation of the complaint, i.e. for a final decision of its acceptability and eventually also its adjudication, the ECHR needs to know the stance of the defendant government, as in any other trial," he said.

In 2007, Brožová-Polednová was found guilty of judicial murder and sentenced to eight years' imprisonment. This sentence was overturned, but the following year she faced another trial in which she was also found guilty and sentenced to six years.

After a series of unsuccessful appeals, Brožová-Polednová became the Czech Republic's oldest prisoner in March 2009 when she was incarcerated at a special geriatric facility at the Světlá nad Sázavou Prison in central Bohemia.

A recent attempt to have her sentence halved under presidential amnesties was also unsuccessful.

Brožová-Polednová's appeal arguments were not helped by some of the evidence that came to light during her trial, including an eyewitness note reporting that she told Horáková's executioners, "Don't break her neck on the noose. Suffocate the bitch, and the others too."

She is also said to be unrepentant for her role in the trial, describing her actions as part of a struggle against Western imperialists.

At the age of 29, she was one of the "people's prosecutors" recruited by the regime to try Horáková, who had already escaped death once after being captured by the Gestapo in 1940 and spending five years in Nazi jails, including the Terezín concentration camp.

Horáková and several alleged co-conspirators were tried on trumped-up charges of treason and espionage, with the regime claiming they had sought to overthrow the state of Czechoslovakia.

Brožová-Polednová took part in the trial along with four other "people's prosecutors" and five judges, and personally recommended the death penalty for Horáková.

The mother of one was hanged along with three co-defendants on June 27, 1950 - a date now designated in the Czech Republic as a day of remembrance for victims of the communist regime.

In the decades after the executions, Brožová-Polednová lived in the city of Plzeň in an apartment just a block from what is now called Milada Horáková Square.

She can request early release in 2013, when she will have served two-thirds of her sentence.

- Filip Šenk contributed to this report.

Bill Lehane can be reached at
blehane@praguepost.com