Pardon for judicial murderer condemned

A group of former political prisoners of Communist-era Czechoslovakia has branded the presidential pardon of a woman who participated in the unjust sentencing of four people to death in 1950 a "spit in the face" of all who suffered under the former regime.

President Václav Klaus pardoned 89-year-old Ludmila Brožová-Polednová from serving out the remainder of her three-year jail sentence for judicial murder Dec. 21, along with nine other unrelated pardons.

Brožová-Polednová ended her term as the country's oldest prisoner later that day when relatives picked her up from the special geriatric wing at Světlá nad Sázavou in east Bohemia.

A spokesman for the President's Office, Radim Ochvat, said that in pardoning Brožová-Polednová, Klaus "had considered the high age of the condemned, the fact that she already served part of her sentence and her state of health."

Stanislav Stránský, chairman of the Confederation of Former Political Prisoners, told The Prague Post he believed there "should be no reprieve" for former so-called "people's prosecutors" of the Communist era such as Polednová.

"This is a spit in the face of those who were tortured and executed in the 1950s by these same judges [and prosecutors] including Polednová," said Stránský, whose association includes some 4,000 former political prisoners of the Communist regime and their families.

"To consider the emotions and the age of criminals as in this case is misleading. Everywhere else in the world, she would be sentenced to a life term," Stránský said.

The chairman said it was wrong to pardon someone who "committed a crime and says so proudly to this day," and also questioned taking her advanced years into account.

"We were imprisoned without any age consideration," Stránský said. "Seventy-year-olds were no rarity at that time, and such old people were sentenced to 20 or even more years. Why now be benevolent to Polednová?"

He added that he had visited Světlá nad Sázavou and said its conditions were incomparable to those endured by prisoners of communism, calling the jail "a dormitory with the facilities of a quality hotel."

Stránský also singled out the president for criticism over the pardon, saying that Klaus' "views of Communists are well known," and that his actions regarding this case were unsurprising because "he is not president on behalf of all citizens."

Brožová-Polednová is the only surviving prosecutor of the five who sent Czech democratic campaigner Milada Horáková to her death in June 1950 along with three others, based on trumped-up charges of forming a conspiracy to overthrow the communist regime.

The case later became known as one of the most notorious show trials of communist-era Czechoslovakia.

Horáková had been arrested by the Communists soon after they seized power, having survived five years in Nazi jails during World War II, including the Terezín concentration camp.

When Horáková was sent to the gallows, Brožová-Polednová was reported in an eyewitness note as telling the executioners: "Don't break her neck on the noose. Suffocate the bitch, and the others too."

Horáková is today considered a national hero, and the date of her hanging, June 27, is designated in the Czech Republic as Remembrance Day for the Victims of the Communist Regime.

In the decades after the executions before criminal proceedings were taken against her, Brožová-Polednová lived in an apartment in the city of Plzeň just a block from Milada Horáková Square, which was named in honor of the campaigner.

Sentenced to six years' imprisonment in 2008 over her role in the case, the courts later halved Brožová-Polednová's sentence after deciding that two of the amnesties enacted in 1953, 1955 and 1990 could be taken into consideration after all.

The shorter jail term meant if she had not been pardoned, she could have sought early release as soon as next March.

The pardon also came just weeks before a deadline for the government to file its position in a case taken by Polednová to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), in the latest of a string of appeals.

Polednová's ECHR case had sought to reverse the Czech courts' decision that she was culpable for her actions in the show trial, and to claim the contemporary criminal proceedings against her 60 years later were unjust.

- Filip Šenk contributed to this report.

Bill Lehane can be reached at
blehane@praguepost.com